


Little Girl Lost

by EchoInTheSilence



Series: Not Just Another Case [7]
Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Child Abuse, Family, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-05 17:05:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10313009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoInTheSilence/pseuds/EchoInTheSilence
Summary: Last year, Zach Nichols couldn't imagine having a child. Now he can't imagine not having one. And when he suddenly finds himself without the girl he's come to consider his daughter, his every waking thought is consumed by two questions: where is she, and how can he survive without her?





	1. Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.
> 
> Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, this is primarily a Criminal Intent story, specifically focusing on Nichols, Wheeler, Stevens, and my OC Andrea Marquez from A New Reality. The SVU squad will come into play several chapters in and they do have a key part to play in this arc, but it will be only a supporting role. If you want one that's more SVU-centric, check out my other crossover story Eyes Wide Open.

It was his own house, a place so familiar he could navigate it in his sleep. But right now, it was more like walking through a museum.

His eyes brushed over the dishes that had been left in the kitchen sink and on the table, over the small purple-and-white striped sweater draped over the back of one of the chairs, and over to the brightly-colored magnets on the fridge. All the little marks of how his life had changed over the past five months. All reminding him of how alone he felt.

He had lived alone in this house for decades, and he had never before given more than a passing thought to its size. He had bought it just after his engagement to Lenore Abrigaille had been broken off, unable to bear the memories of her that lingered in his apartment. The townhouse had been in foreclosure, and he'd been able to tell that the neighborhood property values were about to skyrocket. He'd only intended to stay there for a little while, maybe a year or two, long enough to fix it up and be able to sell it for a nice figure and to find a place more suited to a single man who expected to be alone for the foreseeable future, but by the time he'd finished the renovations, he'd decided he liked it enough to stay. Over the years, more than a few people had commented on the size of his home, but as was typical, he hadn't let their reactions affect his feelings on the situation. _It works for me_ , he'd said simply every time.

Only now, for the first time, it didn't. All that space felt horribly empty, even hollow. It was too big and too quiet, and not a thing he could do would fill that emptiness.

He reached out, taking the sweater from the back of the chair and clutching it in his long fingers just as his legs finally gave out and he crumpled to the floor. He didn't even feel the impact of the unyielding ceramic tile under his knees. Nothing existed except for the all-consuming pain.

"Andrea," he whispered as hot tears streaked his face, "where are you, baby girl? Where are you?"


	2. The Day The World Stopped

"Andrea!" Zach called up the stairs. "Come on or we're both going to be late!"

A dark-haired figure poked out over the top of the staircase, a slip-on sneaker in one hand. "I can't find my other shoe."

Zach couldn't help a sad smile. This was a problem Andrea had recently developed, and unlike what he'd been told about other children, it wasn't because she was messy or disorganized. It was because she wasn't used to owning enough things that one thing could be misplaced among others. "Can you wear a different pair?" he suggested, careful to phrase it as a suggestion instead of a recrimination. "I know those are your favorites, but how about you wear a different pair for today, and then I'll help you look for your other shoe tonight, okay?"

She considered it for a moment before smiling. "Okay." She turned around and ran back to her room, emerging a few minutes later with a different pair of sneakers, sitting down on the step to pull them on and tie them. "I'm ready," she said after a few minutes, jumping to her feet and running down the stairs.

Zach reached into the closet for his coat, pulling out Andrea's at the same time and handing it to her. She zipped it on. "Okay, let's go."

He couldn't help but laugh. "Yes, let's go."

xxxxxxxxx

"Now don't forget," he said as he handed Andrea's backpack to her. "I have to work until six tonight, so Megan's picking you up at five."

"I remember," she said with as much aggravation as she ever mustered, gentle and compliant as she was.

"Sorry." He gave her a warm smile. "I just want to make sure."

"Okay," she replied, her frustration gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"And Andi?"

"Yes?"

"I have a surprise for you after school."

Now she smiled from ear to ear. "Really?"

"Yep. But I can't tell you what it is or it wouldn't be a surprise anymore." He reached into the backseat and gave her a quick hug. "Get going, sweetheart. I love you."

"I love you too." She smiled again as she climbed out of the car.

He watched her walk into the school, still smiling to himself. _If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be dropping my daughter off at school, I might've considered arresting them for drug use._ But this morning routine had become not only familiar but a welcome part of his day. _I guess this is what being a parent is about._

xxxxxxxxx

"What can you tell us about -?"

Serena's question was interrupted by the ringing of her partner's phone, and he looked up abashedly. "Sorry," he said to both his partner and the witness they were interviewing. "Excuse me, I have to take this." He stepped to the other side of the room's doorway before reaching into his pocket and activating the phone. "Nichols."

" _Zach?_ "

"Megan?" He recognized his friend's voice instantly, and also recognized that she didn't sound like she normally did. "Is everything okay?"

" _Did you, um_ ," she hesitated, and he couldn't help but think she sounded scared. " _Did you change the arrangements for Andrea today?_ "

"No," he replied immediately. "I thought you were picking her up. That _is_ what we agreed on the other night." _Could Megan have forgotten?_ If she had, he'd be more worried about her than anything. It wasn't like his friend to forget something like that.

There was silence on the other end for a moment and then a long, slow exhale. " _I was afraid you were going to say that._ "

Her tone made clear to him that something was going on, and his instinct was telling him that it wasn't a mere case of forgetfulness. "Megan, what is going on?"

Another long silence. " _Zach, I'm here_ ," she said finally. " _And Andrea's- not. She's not here_."

Near-panic instantly flooded him. "What do you mean, she's not there?" He hoped desperately that he was misunderstanding.

" _She's not with the other kids_ ," Megan replied, sounding almost as panicked as he felt. " _And no one knows where she is. We've already checked everywhere the after-school program kids went._ "

"No," he replied instantly, his mind refusing to process what he'd just been told. "That's not possible."

" _I'm sorry_ ," she replied brokenly. " _Where are you?_ "

 _Not where I need to be,_ his mind replied, but all he said was, "Upstate. Probably about ninety minutes out. I'll be there as soon as I can. If you find her -"

" _I'll call you. I promise._ "

"And Megan?"

" _Yes?_ "

He swallowed hard, hating to even think of the possibility that what he anticipated might be necessary but knowing that he would hate himself more if it turned out to have been necessary and he failed to mention it. "When you think you've done all you can, if you still haven't found her, call the local precinct and file a report. You know the words to use to get their attention."

" _Right. Got it._ " The tone in her voice suggested that she was uncomfortably close to that eventuality.

Zach realized his hand was shaking as he hung up the phone. _No, this can't be happening._ He forcibly collected himself outwardly before stepping back into the room. "Excuse me," he said to the witness, forcing his voice to remain steady. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Derring. I'm afraid we have to cut this interview short, but we'll be in touch."

Without even waiting for an acknowledgment, he turned and headed back towards the front door. The sound of hurried footsteps told him Serena was running to catch up with him.

"What the hell was that?" she asked as soon as the door closed behind them. "I barely got through half of my questions, and her testimony could be crucial. The Captain knows that; he also knows how much of a waste of time it would be for us to head back now and drive all the way back another time. So what is going on?"

He could barely breathe. He knew Serena hadn't meant any harm, but just the reminder of how far they were from the city, how far _he_ was from his daughter in this crisis, drove another spike of pain through his heart. "I'm sorry," he finally managed. "It's Andrea."

Serena's entire demeanor instantly changed from anger to worry. "What's happened? Is she okay?"

"I don't know," he replied, letting the helplessness and fear he felt finally show through. "She's disappeared."

Shock and horror crossed the female detective's face now. Short of a child's death, this was a parent's worst nightmare, and her partner was living through it right this moment. "I'm so sorry." She laid a gentle hand on his arm for a moment before turning it palm-up in front of him. "Keys."

"What?"

"If you think I'm going to let you behind the wheel right now, you're out of your mind. There's no way you can focus enough to drive." Her expression softened. "I'll get us there, Zach, as fast as possible. But I want to make sure we get there in one piece. Besides, this way if you get another call you can answer right away."

Still in a daze, he pulled out the keys and handed them to her. "Okay."

She watched him get into the car, still not really aware of the world around him, and wished there was more she could do or say. But there was nothing to be said. She couldn't answer any of the questions she knew he was silently asking. And she couldn't even offer a reassurance, because how could she tell him it was going to be okay when the truth was that she had no idea whether or not it was?

xxxxxxxxx

Zach was out of the car almost before it came to a full stop, running around the front end and across the street, apparently unaware of the multiple horns that blared their distaste for his action. For her part, the moment she had the car safely in the parking space, Serena immediately shut off the engine and ran after him, waiting just long enough to make sure she was clear to cross. It was only after she turned off the lights on the sedan that she realized there were other flashing red and blue lights in the area. Her stomach churned. If they'd gotten to this point, that meant that at best, things weren't looking good.

Megan was standing just inside the school entryway, talking to a plainclothes detective as tears ran down her face. She turned as she heard footsteps, taking in her last partner's scared and worried expression just before he spoke. "What's the news?"

"Nothing," she replied, rubbing her eyes harshly. "Zach, I am so sorry. She was my responsibility today and I -"

"Don't blame yourself," he replied, realizing as he spoke that his voice sounded as shaky as hers. "The school was supposed to be watching her, not you."

"Zach Nichols, I presume?" the officer asked, and he nodded. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask for identification."

"Of course." He pulled his police ID and badge from his pocket, offering it to the officer.

The man took it, looking surprised. "You're a cop? Your friend didn't mention."

"I'm sorry," Megan said again. "I should've, I guess I wasn't thinking things through all the way."

"It's okay," he reassured her. "I wouldn't have either. That's just what I'm used to showing when people ask for ID."

The officer handed the badge back. "So, I just need to ask you a few questions -"

"Detective!"

Zach turned automatically at the call, even though he knew it probably wasn't meant for him. A female officer was running towards them. "I found something you need to see." She handed her phone to the detective who studied it.

"Detective Nichols?" he asked finally. "Do you recognize this?"

The phone was turned towards him and Zach thought he'd forgotten how to breathe. "It's hers," he gasped out once he finally managed to speak, still staring at the photo of a purple backpack with several distinctive patches ironed on and an equally distinctive, if small, darkened spot near the top. "That's Andi's bag. My God, is that blood? What does this mean?"

The detective considered the question for a moment but finally seemed to decide that he wouldn't be able to keep the truth from Zach anyway. "It means that our missing persons case has just escalated to a suspected abduction."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this one is backing up a bit. I'm trying a new technique of setting the prologue at a key moment in the story instead of the chronological beginning and then backing up the timeline in the next chapter to explain how this moment came to be. (It's entirely possible that this idea stemmed from my recent binge-watching of the show Flashpoint, which uses this technique in many of their episodes.) At this point, I don't intend to use this in all or even most of my stories in the future, but it seemed to fit especially well with this story. 
> 
> Everything from this chapter onward will be in linear format. This will not be one of those stories that repeatedly jumps between different points in time.


	3. Probable Abduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a whole lot here, mostly just establishing facts, but it's necessary to set up the rest of the story. The part where Megan says that Zach helped her out after her child's birth (which would be around the time of Revolution and Loyalty) was entirely my own conjecture.

"I hate kid cases," Amaro said softly. "Hate them."

Olivia looked over at him, seeing the struggle in his face that she knew mirrored her own. "I know. I do too." It was a consensus among most of the officers that came through SVU. The crimes they handled were awful enough, but when children were touched by those horrors, it was even worse.

The first thing they saw was the small group of parents standing in the parking lot, many of them holding their respective children close. They glanced at each other, both understanding the instinct. If it had been their children in the vicinity of such a crime, they'd hold those children tight and never want to let go.

"We've been keeping access restricted since we got the call," the officer told Olivia. "We've let the parents in to pick up their kids, we didn't want to cause a panic, but no one's been allowed to leave until we've talked to them and we've kept them in a few designated areas so they don't trample all over potential evidence. Most of the statements have already been collected; those parents and kids are the ones who are still waiting."

"Thank you," she responded as she and Amaro climbed out of the car. "What do we know?"

"Missing eight-year-old girl," he told them as they stepped through the barricade keeping the public away from most of the playground. "Andrea Marquez. Reported missing about an hour ago, but last confirmed sighting is almost two hours before that. We called you when we found her backpack, the detectives on scene thought that warranted upping the classification to a probable kidnapping."

"What took them two hours to call?" Amaro asked before he could stop himself.

The officer grimaced. "Well, no one even realized she was missing for over an hour. According to the staff, she's a quiet kid that people don't notice, so no one realized when she just wasn't there until the babysitter came to pick her up, then they realized she wasn't with the other kids and no one knew where she was. They checked the school and the grounds first, and then they called us."

The younger detective's eyes, however, were now fixed on a point past the officer. After a moment, Olivia realized he was looking at a redheaded woman who was sitting on a bench with a small, pigtailed girl apparently asleep in her lap. "I know her," he said after a few moments' silence. "She used to be a cop."

"That's the babysitter," the officer replied. "She didn't mention being on the force."

Amaro only nodded, stepping past the officer and walking straight towards the object of his attention, calling out as he approached. "Megan?"

She looked up with red-rimmed eyes. "Nick? My God, it's been years."

"Are you okay?" he asked, concerned now. He'd never seen her look this upset.

She dabbed at her eyes. "I just - how can this be happening? How could I let this happen on my watch?"

"It sounds to me like this happened before you were here," Olivia replied gently, stepping up beside the other detective. "I'm Sergeant Olivia Benson, Nick's partner. It's Megan, did I hear that right?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Megan Wheeler."

"And you're Andrea Marquez's babysitter?"

"Yeah - well, sort of. It's not really a formal arrangement, I just watch her sometimes for Zach."

"Zach?" Olivia asked. "Who's that, your boyfriend?"

"No," she replied. "Just a friend - well, there's no _just_ about it, but we've never been, you know, involved. He was my last partner before I left the force."

"Which was how long ago?"

"Four years and change. I left when Margo was born." She absentmindedly her hand over the little girl's head. "You know, that was right about the time our friendship solidified. I mean, we became friends as partners, but if that had been all it was, I don't know that we'd still be close. Zach was there for me at a time when I desperately needed a friend, without me even having to ask for help. I was a single mother with a newborn and so sick I could barely get out of bed - I ended up back in the hospital a week after I was discharged with what turned out to be a massive infection. I don't know what I would've done if I'd been alone."

"So your friend, Zach, he's Andrea's father?" Nick asked.

"Foster father, technically, but it really is just a technicality as far as he's concerned. It's crystal clear that she couldn't be any more his child if she shared his DNA. And before you ask, he's fostering as a single parent. He has friends supporting him, including me, but there's no second parent in the picture."

"Is he here?" Olivia asked.

"Over there." She indicated a group of three people standing together near the front door of the school.

"I'll go talk to him," the Sergeant offered. "Nick, can you finish interviewing Megan?"

He nodded. "Of course."

Even as she approached them, before a single word was spoken, Olivia was able to identify who each of the three were. The tall man who wore a grief-stricken, lost expression was clearly Zach, the missing girl's father. The man with the gentle but professional expression had to be the Missing Persons detective. And the only woman in the group, who looked seriously worried but composed with her hand on the tall man's arm, was another piece of his support system. Definitely a friend, possibly, Olivia thought, a partner.

"Excuse me," she said softly, mostly directing her comments towards Zach. "I'm Sergeant Olivia Benson. You're Andrea's father?" She deliberately omitted the qualifier. She knew better than most what it was like to have a foster child that she loved like her own flesh and blood.

"Yes," he replied, sounding as lost as he looked. "Zach Nichols."

"Serena Stevens," the woman offered, reaching out her hand to shake Olivia's. "I'm his partner." Olivia nodded as she took the woman's hand, her suspicions confirmed. "Is there any news?"

"No, I'm sorry." She looked over at Zach. "Detective?" It was a fair guess, given the fact that he was dressed in plainclothes that were on the formal side, and no one corrected her. "I need to ask you some questions about Andrea."

"Okay."

"When did you become her foster parent?"

"July nineteenth," he replied immediately. It immediately reinforced what Olivia had already been thinking; this man's foster experience was similar to her.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"This morning, right out front in the car." He choked a little. "It was a normal day. I told her I loved her and I watched her walk into the school. I thought I'd see her when I got off work, I didn't realize -" He couldn't finish the sentence. "I told her I had a surprise for her."

"What was it?"

"I was going to take her to dinner and tell her - tell her that I was starting the proceedings to adopt her." He pressed a hand to his face, visibly holding back tears. "I talked to Heather - the caseworker - and she said everything looked good. She said she was rooting for us." His shoulders hitched, and Serena laid a hand on his back.

Olivia winced in sympathy. It was bad enough that this was happening, but on this of all days, it had to be heartbreaking. "Do you remember what she was wearing this morning?"

"A dark green sweater with a white pattern," he said after a moment. "Blue jeans and - and white sneakers. She wanted to wear her gray slip-ons but she couldn't find one of them and we didn't have time to look. I was going to help her find it tonight." Again, his voice was strained. "She had a light blue and purple winter coat."

"Do you have a recent photo?"

He reached into his pocket for his phone, scrolling through it. "Here," he said finally, handing it to Olivia. "It's from Thanksgiving, does that work?"

Olivia felt a lump in her own throat looking at the little girl sitting backwards on a piano bench, a joyful smile lighting her young face. "Do you mind if I text this to myself?"

"No, of course not," he replied numbly. "If it'll help."

"Can you tell me about your daughter?" Olivia asked as she handed his phone back. "She plays piano?"

"A little bit," he replied. "It's me who really plays. I've taught her some, offered to teach her as much as she wants, but mostly she just likes to listen. She's, um, she's very smart. She has better reasoning skills than some adults I come across on the job. But - but she's so timid. She's an abuse survivor, emotional and physical, and she's learned to survive by trying to submit completely to the adults in her life. She doesn't want to speak up for herself because experience has taught her that that just causes more problems. I've been trying to work with her on that, but it's not easy to overcome a lifetime of conditioning that probably started before she was able to walk or talk. She's more comfortable asserting herself with me now, but she still defaults to her old habits with unfamiliar adults. She doesn't spend a lot of time around other kids either. I think she just doesn't relate very well to most children her age."

"Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt her?"

"There's - there's Vincent Thomas," he replied after a moment, horror in his tone. "But he's locked up."

"The Park Strangler?" Amaro had come up behind his partner just in time to hear the last question and Zach's response.

Zach was clearly struggling to speak through the flood of emotion, so Serena stepped up instead, still resting a comforting hand on his back. "That's how we first came into contact with her. She saw Thomas kill his last victim, making her the only living witness to his crimes. What's more, she didn't just get a good look at his face, she also got a good look at his car and managed to remember part of his plate number. I don't know that we ever would have even looked in his direction otherwise; we had no leads before Andi came forward. But Zach's right, he's serving multiple consecutive life sentences, and he was a pretty serious loner. I can't imagine he's got the reach to get at her from behind bars."

"You worked the Park Strangler," Olivia commented, feeling the wheels in her head turning. "That would make you what, Major Case?" They both nodded. "Can you think of anyone who might take Andrea to hurt _you_?"

Zach flinched as though he'd been struck. "Oh, God. I - I don't know. I've been Major Case for more than four years. I've put away dozens of serious criminals. If one of them took her -"

"We'd like to look through those files," Olivia said gently.

"Of course," he said, raising his head. "Anything you need, just please find her. Please find my baby."

The agonized look in his eyes cut straight to her heart. "We're going to do everything we can. Just one more question..."

xxxxxxxxx

As the Sergeant walked away, Zach became vaguely aware of a pair of hands gently steering him. He complied automatically, without thought, and was guided to sit down on what he belatedly realized was a flight of stairs. In the next moment, he was able to identify the person beside him as Serena.

He felt her warm hand ease his head down to her shoulder, fingers running over his hair and the back of his neck. "I'm here, Zach," she was whispering. "I'm right here. Just try to slow your breathing down, okay? Come on, in...and out..."

 _What?_ But then he realized he was, in fact, breathing so fast that he was in danger of hyperventilating. With an effort, he forced himself to match his breathing to the slow, even pace that Serena was setting for him, a pace that matched the movements of her hand.

"You think you can walk?" she asked after several minutes.

"Yeah, I think so."

She offered him her hand to help him up. "We'll go by your house to grab anything you might need, and then we'll go to my place." Her tone, while still kind and compassionate, brooked no argument.

He didn't have the mental capacity right that moment to object in any case, and he let her lead him to the car.

xxxxxxxxx

In days to come, Zach wouldn't remember how he got from the car to the house. It was a series of actions taken without thought. The first thing he clearly remembered was standing in the foyer.

It was his own house, a place so familiar he could navigate it in his sleep. But right now, it was more like walking through a museum.

His eyes brushed over the dishes that had been left in the kitchen sink and on the table, over the small purple-and-white striped sweater draped over the back of one of the chairs, and over to the brightly-colored magnets on the fridge. All the little marks of how his life had changed over the past five months. All reminding him of how alone he felt.

He had lived alone in this house for decades, and he had never before given more than a passing thought to its size. Over the years, more than a few people had commented on the size of his home, but as was typical, he hadn't let their reactions affect his feelings on the situation. _It works for me_ , he'd said simply every time.

Only now, for the first time, it didn't. All that space felt horribly empty, even hollow. It was too big and too quiet, and not a thing he could do would fill that emptiness.

He reached out, taking the sweater from the back of the chair and clutching it in his long fingers just as his legs finally gave out and he crumpled to the floor. He didn't even feel the impact of the unyielding ceramic tile under his knees. Nothing existed except for the all-consuming pain.

"Andrea," he whispered as hot tears streaked his face, "where are you, baby girl? Where are you?"

A pair of arms wrapped around him, holding him close, and again he heard Serena's voice in his ear. He couldn't make out what she was saying, heard the sounds but couldn't pull them together into words. He clung to her, trying to remind himself that she was there, that despite the hole that had just been ripped through his heart, he wasn't alone in the world.

"Hurts..." he managed to gasp out finally as his command of spoken language began to return.

"I know it does," she whispered. "I know it hurts."

He let her hold him close until he felt like he could stand. She stood with him. "Come on. Let's grab some things and then get going. This house isn't good for you right now."

"But what if there's a ransom call? If I'm not here -"

"Sergeant Benson's going to have TARU put a divert on your home phone, remember?" It was one of the last things she had told them during the interview, and in retrospect Serena thought she should have realized he might miss it. "It'll ring through to your cell."

"Right. Right, of course. I'm sorry."

She squeezed his shoulder. "Don't be."


	4. In the Dark

Zach closed his eyes as his fingers danced over the keys. He was glad Serena had thought to take his keyboard along with everything else they had grabbed from his house. He had been in no state to think of anything.

Even though he couldn't hear her footsteps with his keyboard headphones on, he became aware of his partner standing behind him. He opened his eyes again, pulling the headphones off, seeing her there with a dressing gown over her pajamas. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

She shook her head. "I was awake. I can't seem to fall asleep." She left off mentioning that it was mostly because she was worried about him. "I was getting a glass of water and I saw the light was on."

Under normal circumstances, Zach would have immediately picked up on what she was trying to hide, but right then he was too distracted by the maelstrom in his own head. "I can't sleep either. Every time I try, I see Andi's face or I think I hear her calling for me."

She gently ran her hand over the back of his where it rested on the keys. "Does the music help?"

"It keeps me grounded in the present, but - no, not really," he admitted. "I can't get it out of my head, thinking about what could've happened. The blood on the backpack - damn -"

She drew her friend into her arms, her heart breaking for him. "I'm so sorry," she whispered helplessly, knowing it was all she could say. Any reassurance she could give would be hollow and meaningless, and he would know it was.

"I - I don't know how to do this," he said after a moment.

"No one does, Zach," she soothed. "What you're going through is horrible. No one is expected to be equipped to deal with it."

"No," he objected. "No, I mean - I mean I don't know how to face the things that hurt me. You know, you've never asked me about that seven-year-sabbatical I took."

She shrugged. "I wasn't even in the department then. I didn't think it had anything to do with me."

"It doesn't," he confirmed, indicating for her to sit on the small couch beside where he'd set up the keyboard, "but it has everything to do with me. Go ahead, sit, this may take awhile." She did, and he continued. "Well, it really started with 9/11. The night of the tenth, Danny and I ended up pulling an all-night stakeout trying to catch a particularly slippery suspect. We got him eventually, but by the time we made the arrest and got him to the station, it was after dawn and we'd been on shift for over twenty-four hours straight. Captain gave us the day off considering and we decided to stop for something to eat in a cafe before splitting up to head home - we were both starving and way too tired to even think of cooking. As it was, Danny almost signed his credit card slip upside down before the barista noticed and got it turned the right way." He couldn't help but chuckle at the memory, tainted though it was by the memories that surrounded it. "We were eating at a table next to the window, I was giving him a hard time for spending multiple hours during the stakeout complaining about the status of his divorce proceedings when I saw an odd shadow and heard a sound - I thought it sounded like a plane coming in close, but it was Lower Manhattan, miles from LaGuardia and further from JFK. I'm looking around to see what it is, and I - I was looking right at the towers when it happened."

"My God," Serena gasped. "How close were you?"

"About fifteen blocks," he replied. "Far enough to be out of the danger zone, close enough to clearly see what was happening. And we did. See it, I mean. It's hard to remember exactly, the whole day felt so surreal. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene, I was still staring when the second plane hit. And I - I remember hearing screams, and looking back I know that the people around me were panicking, but at the time I thought I could hear the screams of the victims themselves. I could tell there was a lot of pain in there."

Serena just nodded sadly. Her partner, she had learned long ago, was extremely sensitive to his environment, and whether or not he'd actually been able to hear the screams, she was sure that on some level he'd been completely aware of that pain.

"Danny finally got me to move, and we went and helped out however we could just like every other cop in the city that day. But I couldn't shake the images, the feelings. Not that day and not after. I'd finally start to forget and then I'd see a news article or a TV spot, or I'd look at the skyline and see that big empty hole where the towers had always been. After a month, I couldn't take it anymore, so I just left. Left the city behind with all its memories and didn't come back for seven years. It's the same thing I always did when things got too difficult to handle. When my parents had marital problems, I just spent more time at school and roaming the city - that's how that started, in case you've ever wondered. When Lenore had slipped so far that there was no hope of a rekindled relationship, I cut off all contact with her, bought the house, and gave notice at the apartment we'd shared. That's what I do, Serena. I run. Only now, I can't even do that. If I ran now, I'd be abandoning my daughter." He dropped his head into his hands. "I can't - I don't know how -"

She cut him off gently. "Come here."

Much as he had earlier that day, he complied almost automatically with her suggestion, moving from the re-purposed kitchen chair to join her on the couch. She turned to face him, drawing him into her arms. "I know there's nothing I can say or do to make this hurt any less," she whispered, "but if it helps at all, you don't have to go through it completely alone. Megan and I are here for you." She felt his shoulders hitch under her hand and realized he was nearly crying on her shoulder. "Shh, just let it out. It'll only hurt you more to hold all that pain inside."

"I don't think that's possible," he whispered hoarsely. "To hurt more than I do - now -" Then he broke down sobbing in her arms, releasing a veritable tidal wave of emotion that refused to be held back any longer.

Serena began to cry too; it hurt her just watching the agony her friend was being forced to endure. She held him close to her, rubbing his back as he continued to sob long after her own tears had dried up. By the time his outpouring of grief was spent, he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

"Come on," she said gently, standing up and pulling him to his feet with her. "You need to sleep."

"No," he objected, stepping away from her, heading back for the kitchen chair he'd been using with the keyboard. "I'll just...I'll just play awhile."

She pulled him back, stepping into his path at the same time. "You'll end up falling asleep on the keys."

"My prerogative." She didn't move, and he relented a bit. "I don't want to sleep right now. My waking thoughts are bad enough. I don't want to dream."

 _Of course he doesn't._ "I don't blame you a bit," she soothed. "But you're out on your feet right now. You won't be able to fight it off much longer. You might as well be lying down when you fall asleep."

When he offered no further protest, she walked him back across the room to the futon she'd set up as a spare bed, covering him with a blanket as he lay down and sitting beside him until he succumbed to the inevitable sleep he'd already been on the edge of. Before heading for her own bed, Serena sent him a silent wish that he not dream too much.

xxxxxxxxx

"What's this war room for?" Declan Murphy asked, surveying the small conference room where his Sergeant and her partner had laid out more than a few files.

"Andrea Marquez," Nick explained while Olivia continued to hunt through the files. "Missing eight-year-old."

"This is a lot of space for a missing kid case - isn't it?" he asked belatedly. He often had to remind himself that while he had the senior rank, he had less experience in SVU than any of the detectives under his command.

"Usually," Olivia replied, finally looking up from all the papers. "But this one's particularly complicated. A lot of possible motives and no solid leads."

"How many motives are we talking about?" Murphy asked, puzzled. "This is a grade-school girl."

"We know," Nick confirmed, "but she's in the middle of a very complicated web. For one thing, there's the Park Strangler case."

"That psycho who murdered half a dozen witnesses so they couldn't ID him?" Murphy managed to put the last pieces together on his own. "Wait, I remember reading there was a young witness in that case. The media couldn't get enough of her. No one managed to snap a picture, but her name and testimony were all over the front pages. This is _that_ girl?"

"Yeah, which sets up two possibilities already. One is that Thomas or an associate of his is behind this, and the other is that it's someone who read her name in the paper and developed some kind of obsession."

"You really think someone would kidnap her because she was in the news?" Murphy asked.

"Crazier things have happened," Olivia replied wryly. "It doesn't take much to push all the wrong buttons in some people. Someone reads a name in a paper and next thing we know they've conjured up some kind of relationship with her."

The Lieutenant was still shaking his head in disbelief. "You said there were a lot of possible motives. What are our other options?"

"Ransom, although we're close to ruling that out," she explained. "There is family money, but we're more than twelve hours in without a call. That's practically unheard of in a ransom snatch."

"Then there's the foster father himself," Nick added.

"He's a cop, right?"

"Yes," the detective confirmed, "and not just any cop either. He's got a long track record in Major Case and Anti-Crime before that. There's a long list of people who have a reason to want to hurt this guy."

"We're starting with the most recent ones," she put in. "He hasn't been Andrea's guardian for all that long, and it would be very difficult for anyone to find that out from even an intensive search, especially if they didn't know what they were looking for. And then -"

"Wait. There are _more_ possibilities?"

"One more," Olivia said grimly. "According to everyone we talked to, Andrea was very timid and kept to herself. The teachers told us that she didn't play with the other kids very much, and sometimes she'd spend her time outside during recess and after-care just sitting by the fence and reading. It makes her the perfect target for a random snatch."

"So you're telling me that there are dozens of people out there with reasons to target this girl specifically, but there's a decent chance that the person who took her doesn't even have a personal motive?"

"That's the long and short of it, yeah."

He shook his head. "Okay, you two. Do what you need to, and don't be afraid to pull some extra manpower if you need it."

xxxxxxxxx

"This is awful." The sentiment of Heather Bryce's words was reflected in her face. "I can't believe it."

"How long have you been Andrea's caseworker?" Olivia asked.

"Over four years now, ever since she was removed from her biological mother." She bent over her drawers, browsing through the contents briefly before pulling out a hefty file. "This is hers. Here, initial contact date is March twelfth, 2009."

Nick whistled under his breath. "That's a lot of paper for one kid."

Heather sighed, nodding. "Eight homes in under five years, and even that doesn't really give you an idea of how chaotic some of that time was." She opened the file's top cover. "First was an emergency placement for the three weeks after she was removed, I don't even count that one in the total anymore. Then we placed her with a family, but that fell through after four months."

"What happened?" Olivia wanted to know.

Heather grimaced. "They claimed she was destructive, but - I found out after the failed placement that they lived by the motto 'don't child-proof the house, house-proof the children.'"

The two detectives exchanged incredulous looks that Heather couldn't miss. She smiled sadly. "I take it you two are parents?" They both nodded. "Well, then you'll understand that it was a lot easier said than done. They kept fragile objects and plants around as if they had no children and expected a four-year-old - and their three biological kids - not to damage anything. I wholeheartedly believe that Andrea was exhibiting curiosity, not destructiveness. So I placed her with another family, but ACS found out they were taking in children through multiple agencies without informing each agency of the others; they had a dozen kids in the house and this agency thought they only had two. So the state yanked their license six months after Andrea had moved in there, and several children including Andrea were sent to a group home. She stayed there for eight months until I found another home for her, but it turned out that one was no good either. They had some very, shall we say, outdated ideas of how girls should behave, which Andrea didn't agree with."

"Seems like this girl's had nothing but bad luck."

"That, Detective Amaro, is the understatement of the century. I removed her after three months when I witnessed a relevant argument between the mother and another girl in the home. After that, I wanted to do everything in my power to get her into a good placement, and it just so happened that there was an opening with a woman who'd been a foster mother for two decades with an excellent reputation." Heather smiled wistfully. "I'll never forget one home visit, a month after I placed her, finding her playing on a tire swing in the backyard with one of her foster brothers. I thought finally she had a home that would work for her. I intended to keep here there indefinitely, until she aged out if possible. Fourteen months after Andrea moved in, her foster mother keeled over in the kitchen with a heart attack."

"Oh, no," Olivia said sadly. "That must have been hard for her to see."

"She survived, thank God," Heather told them, "but she was in no shape to care for any children, let alone the six she had living with her. So that got Andrea another four months in group care, and then nine months with a family that looked picture-perfect and turned out to be rotten at the core. This past April, she nearly died of untreated appendicitis because they didn't take her to the hospital when she started showing symptoms. After which I found out that they treated her as free maid service."

"She never complained?" Nick asked, startled. "The one time my seven-year-old didn't want to dry the dishes for me, I think they heard her in the next county."

Olivia laughed despite herself at the mental image, and she could see that Heather Bryce was biting back a smile of her own. "I'm sure they did, but that's not Andrea. I don't know if it's personality or conditioning or a mix of both, but she doesn't complain. Every bad situation she was in I found out from someone else."

"Conditioning," Olivia repeated. "She was abused?"

Heather nodded an affirmative. "From what we can figure out, Andrea's mother treated her like a tool - use it when it's helpful, toss it aside when you're not using it. But unlike tools, children move, they get in the way, they cry, they seek attention. So she literally beat Andrea into compliance so she wouldn't have to think about her unless she wanted to."

An idea occurred to Nick. "Could Andrea's mother be behind the kidnapping?"

"I don't see how. That woman's parental rights were terminated during Andrea's first stay in the group home; she'd have no way of knowing the current placement. Besides, I don't know why she would. I mean, what would she get out of it?"

The look they shared this time was bemused. It was Olivia who broke the silence. "The motives for kidnapping aren't usually quite that straightforward."

"I'm sorry, I'm not explaining myself well. I know a lot about parental kidnappings, and I know they're usually full of nuances on top of nuances. But _Linda_ isn't. To her, life is a transaction, it's all about what she can gain, and I mean that in a literal, material sense. Like I said." She shrugged. "I can't see her doing this. Parental kidnappings are usually emotional, and I remember thinking after spending five minutes in the same room with her that it was like her heart was a block of ice. No emotions at all. I met her a handful of times, and I never saw a thing to contradict my initial opinion."

"We'll take that into consideration." Nick stood up, reaching out to shake her hand. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Bryce."

"Don't thank me," she insisted. "Just find her."

xxxxxxxxx

"I see what she meant," Nick commented. "I feel cold just from looking into her eyes."

"Not to mention her attitude," Olivia agreed. "We tell her her daughter's missing and possibly in danger, and her reply is 'it's not my problem anymore'?"

"Unfortunately," he sighed, "being a shitty parent isn't a crime, especially if you don't have custody of the kid, and her alibi checks."

"Which means we forget her. And frankly, I'd just as soon not have to remember."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, while this chapter and the previous one did have a fairly substantial appearance by SVU, I still stand by what I said at the beginning; this is primarily a CI story. I just wanted to be able to go through some of the more logical points of the situation, and the investigating officers seemed like a better venue for that than the very emotional Nichols.
> 
> Pretty much everything in the first chunk of this is of my own creation. Promotional materials before Jeff Goldblum came on the show did mention that his sabbatical was a post-9/11 reaction, but the specific question of why was left open, so I just filled in those blanks with my own interpretations.


	5. Impossible Adjustment

"Zach, are you sure about this?"

"I'm positive," he assured his partner. "I really appreciate you letting me crash here for few days, but it's time for me to go home. Especially since Kira will be back later today."

"Kira likes you," she pointed out.

"I know, but you two deserve some mother-daughter time. Serena, it'll be okay. You see me every day anyway, remember? You'll be able to keep an eye on me." He didn't voice the real reason he was so insistent on leaving; he didn't think he could bear to be around little Kira right then, to see Serena interacting with her daughter. It would be rubbing salt in the still-open wound that had been left by Andrea's disappearance. "You have my key and as of right now my permission to come over if you think something's wrong, okay?"

"Okay," she said finally. "I'm not going to try to force you to stay. But if you do change your mind, you know where I live and it doesn't take long to set up the futon, understand?"

"Loud and clear. Thank you, Serena."

xxxxxxxxx

Well, he thought, at least he'd managed to make it up the stairs. That counted as progress, didn't it?

It had been three days now since that fateful morning when he had last seen his daughter's face, heard her soft voice telling him she loved him as she stepped out of the car. _If only I could do that day over, I never would have left her at school_. Logically, he knew that only retrospect allowed him to think that way, but his emotions wouldn't let that logic reign unchecked.

In those three days, he'd heard nothing. Benson had called him once, just to let him know that given the amount of time that had passed, they were tentatively ruling out the possibility of a ransom kidnapping. It had been a hard blow to accept. While no option was good, a ransom kidnapping had stood the best chance of being resolved quickly and without harm to Andrea. The remaining possibilities he could think of were more grim, and he'd gotten the idea after speaking with Benson that there were other possibilities she wasn't telling him about. He understood; he wasn't a cop on this case, she couldn't tell him everything, and there were some images he didn't need in his head anyway.

He looked over Andrea's room one last time before pulling the door closed. Until she was found (and it had to be until, not unless) the door would remain closed to prevent anything inside from being disturbed - and, if he was to be honest with himself, to spare himself the visual reminder. "Please come home," he whispered as the latch clicked.

He headed back down the stairs, towards his full-size piano. The keyboard was wonderful in a pinch but no substitute for the real thing. As he went to sit on the bench, his foot hit something. As he bent to pick it up, he realized it was Andrea's shoe, the very one she'd been looking for on that last normal morning. And then, all at once, he began to both laugh and cry.

xxxxxxxxx

"How are you doing?"

Zach glanced over at the body lying on the sidewalk and then to his partner. "You're asking me this _now_?"

She shrugged. "He's not going anywhere."

He cracked a smile despite himself. "That sounds like something I would say."

"Where do you think I learned it from? And by the way, don't think I missed you evading the question there."

"It's good to be back," he said truthfully. Work was good for keeping his mind away from his pain. "But," he admitted, "it's not always easy. I know what the numbers say."

"Numbers are just odds. Someone has to make up the smaller number," she reminded him gently, the best reassurance she knew how to give. Even as she said it, she cringed. _What kind of support is that?_

But he only smiled, albeit sadly. "I know. That's what I've been telling myself. Andrea survived Vincent Thomas, a man who killed every other witness to his crimes, by her wits and her skills. But without knowing what she's up against, I have no way of knowing if any characteristic is going to matter." His composure cracked ever so slightly. "I just want my daughter safe in my arms. Is that too much to ask?"

"Of course not." She laid a hand on her arm, wishing she could hug him but knowing that embracing her partner at a crime scene would probably be considered inappropriate. "And there are a lot of people who will do whatever it takes to make that happen."

"Thank you," he whispered before forcing a mask of composure back onto his face. "Now, what's up with him?"

"Unidentified male, ME thinks dead about a day..."

xxxxxxxxx

Zach almost thought he'd imagined the sound of a ringing doorbell until he heard it again, now fully awake. He wondered, more than a little irritably, who would be ringing his doorbell on Christmas Day. He'd counted on being left alone to sleep the day away.

While his family had been staunchly atheist, they had nevertheless always made a large secular celebration of Christmas. His brother had carried the tradition forward for his children, and this year, Zach had intended to do the same for Andrea. _Especially for Andrea._ He knew there had been only one year in her life so far when she'd gotten to celebrate anything.

The bell rang a third time, and he sighed. "Okay, okay," he called out as though the person at the door could hear him. "I'm coming." He threw a robe on and headed for the front door.

It was only seeing who was on the porch that stopped his anger cold. "Mom."

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

"It's okay," he assured her, stepping back to let her in. "What are you doing here? I didn't expect you."

"It's Christmas."

It hit him then. "Christmas. Right. Of course." Ever since he'd returned to New York after his sabbatical, it had become an unofficial tradition for her to stop by his house on Christmas to share a meal with her younger son. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot." Of course she would assume they'd be sticking to that tradition.

"You forgot?" she repeated, managing to sound both concerned and amused all at once. "If you can't keep track of the calendar, you really are working too hard."

"I remembered the date, I just forgot -" He cut himself off, but too late.

"Zach, is something wrong?"

"No," he lied. "It's nothing. Just work stuff."

She let out something between a sigh and a laugh. "Zach, you should know by now you can't lie to your mother." She gently laid a hand on his shoulder. "I know it's personal. What is it? Is it a girl?"

"No. Yes." He shook his head, which was quickly beginning to ache. "It's complicated."

"I have time." She pulled him towards his couch. "Sit down. Tell me."

"It - it is a girl," he said finally. "Technically. But not the way you think."

For the next fifteen minutes, he poured out the entire story. The Park Strangler and his first meeting with Andrea. The serious incident that had resulted in a removal from her home. How he'd come to love her, even before he'd realized that was what was happening. How he'd made the decision to foster after realizing he couldn't give her up.

"Wait, wait. You took her in over the summer and I'm just hearing about this now?"

He laid his head in one hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't know how to bring up the subject. It's just, your world...the world I come from...foster kids don't really fit in there."

"You're right about that."

"I wasn't sure how you or Dad would react."

"Zach, I don't know if you know this, but I got my start working with children in family court - this was before I had you boys, before your father and I were even married. If there's one thing in this world I absolutely understand, it's the fact that foster children are different from other children only by circumstance. Now, where is little Andrea? I'd love to meet her."

"I - I don't know," he choked out. "I haven't seen her in two weeks. I don't know where she is."

Through tears, he explained the rest of the story. As he did, she took him warmly into her arms, holding him as she had so often when he was a child. "Oh, Zach, I'm so sorry."

Their dinner forgotten, he cried on his mother's shoulder, grateful as he had been many times in the past that his parents had never subscribed to the common idea that boys weren't supposed to display emotions. As psychiatrists, one thing they had absolutely agreed on was the importance of recognizing feelings, and they had imparted that to their sons. Zach had spent the aftermath of several childhood mishaps crying in his mother's arms, and it was oddly comforting to do so now.

"If there's anything I can do," she whispered when his sobs had mostly eased, "just let me know. If you need money...we could post a reward..."

He shook his head quickly. "No, don't do that. Rewards just bring out false leads, people making up stories to claim the money. It won't help."

"Okay. You know more about this than I do." She rubbed his back gently. "But if there _is_ anything, just let me know, please. I'll help any way I can."

"Okay, Mom," he whispered. "Thank you."

But they both knew that the only thing that would help was out of both their reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short-ish, I know, but it was as much as I felt like this chapter needed. At the moment, I'm looking at probably one more chapter like this (though with fewer and longer sections) and then we'll get back to serious plot stuff.
> 
> Nichols' mother is pretty much entirely my own creation; the series doesn't give us much to go on, other than she can be very proud of him ("everyone...and of course your mother is talking about what you've done" from Three-In-One), that she's still on cordial terms with her ex, and that she appears to still be fairly close with Zach. I pieced the rest in based on that and based on how I intend to use the character. The fact that Zach has an older brother gets a couple of mentions on the show, so he gets a nod here as well, though he won't appear as a character.
> 
> The part about why Zach would be uncomfortable telling his parents about Andrea is mostly a compilation of attitudes I've heard or read about, based on what we know of his family's financial situation.


	6. The Razor's Edge

"Morning, Captain." Serena set down the two coffees she was carrying, one on her desk and one on the desk across from hers. Only then did she realize that desk was unoccupied, and looked as if it had been since she'd left the night before. "Where's Zach? Not in yet?"

"Called in sick an hour ago," Hannah responded. "You're flying solo today."

"Got it, Captain," she replied a little distractedly, trying not to let him see her worry. It wasn't the idea of working without a partner that bothered her; she was more than competent and working alone for a day was nothing she hadn't done before. It was the fact that her partner had called in sick, something he barely ever did. Just the idea of Zach _getting_ sick was unusual enough; the man had some kind of cast iron immune system, and she could count on both hands the number of times since she'd known him that he'd actually come down with anything. And even at that, he wasn't the type to call in for a minor cold or the like. _He must be really sick._ She made a mental note to drive by his house over lunch to check on him and see if he needed anything.

"Hey," she heard one detective say from somewhere behind her. "What's today? February nineteenth?"

"Twenty-first, airhead," the man's partner replied affectionately. "Have you ever considered getting professional help for that problem you have keeping track of dates? It's a miracle you come in to work on the right days."

The banter continued, but she didn't hear it. Something was nagging at her now. _Today is February twenty-first._ Something about that date felt vitally important, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

She flipped once through her calendar, but there was nothing there. _Well, at least it's not a work thing I've forgotten._ She did her best to put the question out of her mind. It wasn't vital, and the answer would no doubt come to her at some point.

xxxxxxxxx

Zach lay on his side, having lost track quite a while earlier of how long he'd been staring at his bedroom wall. The passage of time had ceased to matter to him, and even if it hadn't, he doubted he'd be able to turn over and look at the clock. He'd used up all the energy he had to call himself in sick when he had realized that getting out of bed wasn't going to happen.

For a moment, he thought he heard his front door swing open and then click shut. But he dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred to him. _You're hearing things_ , he told yet, it sounded so real; he could almost swear he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. But it didn't make sense. It wasn't like someone could have broken in without making a lot more noise than the sound of an opening door. And, if he was to be honest with himself, it hardly mattered. He felt so awful, he couldn't even bring himself to care about the possibility.

And then he heard his bedroom door creak open, and a voice. "Zach?"

 _Serena. Of course._ It shouldn't have surprised him that she'd pay him a visit after finding out he'd called in sick. "Zach?" she repeated softly. "You awake?"

"Yes."

She stepped around the bed, coming into his field of vision. "How are you feeling?"

"About the same."

She laid a gentle hand on his head. "Well, you don't seem to have a fever. What are your symptoms?"

He reached up to clasp her hand. "I appreciate the concern, Serena, but this isn't physical. It's not something you can make better with a little care."

She flinched suddenly, closing her eyes momentarily and taking in a sharp breath. "Of course. February twenty-first - today's Andrea's birthday, isn't it?"

"She's nine today," he said by way of confirmation. "I should be celebrating with her. Only she's out there somewhere," he waved towards the window with a limp hand, "and I'm here alone. And it - damn it, it hurts so much I can't even breathe."

Serena moved her hand back to his head, this time just running it over his hair in hopes of providing some small measure of comfort. "Zach, I'm sorry. I should've remembered. Have you just been lying here all day?"

"I can't get up," he whispered. "I don't want to anyway. I just - I just want to lie here until I stop feeling anything."

"Oh, Zach," she whispered softly, full of pain for him. "I should've been by first thing this morning."

"It's okay. Wouldn't have mattered."

She ran her hand through his short hair again. "Yes, it would have. Even if all you want to do is lie in bed, you shouldn't be alone right now. Is there someone I can call for you, to stay for the next few hours until my shift is over?"

Silence reigned for a few moments as he racked his overwrought mind. He didn't have that many friends, especially friends he was close enough to call on for help, but he knew his partner would refuse to leave until someone else was there to look out for him. Megan, like Serena, would be at work. Who did that leave?

The answer came to him finally, cutting through the fog. "My mom. Her, um, her number is in my phone. Just tell her who you are."

She gave his hand a quick squeeze. "Okay."

xxxxxxxxx

Serena slowly turned the key in the lock on her best friend's front door. She'd gone back to work after Zach's mother had arrived, but she hadn't been able to concentrate. All of her thoughts had remained in this house, and she'd bolted from her desk the moment her shift was over.

She was met just before the stairs by an older woman she'd met just a few hours earlier. "Mrs. Nichols."

She smiled. "Please, call me Charlotte. My sons' friends always have."

"Okay...Charlotte. Speaking of which -"

"Zach's asleep finally," she said softly, anticipating Serena's question. "Dropped off about half an hour ago."

The detective grimaced. "Rough afternoon?"

Charlotte nodded sadly. "He really loves her, doesn't he? I never saw them together, but..."

"I have, and he does," she confirmed. "They were - are - closer than a lot of my daughter's friends are to their biological parents. It wasn't one-sided by any means either. He's devoted to her, but she idolized him just as much."

"You have a daughter?" Charlotte asked. "How old?"

"Twelve," Serena replied, a smile filling her face as she thought of Kira.

The older woman smiled too. "They grow up so fast, don't they? Now, don't tell your partner I said this, but sometimes it still feels like yesterday when he and his brother were little boys." Her smile faded. "No matter how old they get, you still want to hold them close and protect them from the world like you did when they were babies. But of course, you can't. _I_ can't. Can't protect him from this."

"I can't imagine. I get upset when I can't protect Kira from bullies on the playground."

Charlotte glanced behind her, up the stairs. "And what's worse is that what I'm feeling - I know that he feels that too. On top of everything else, he's torn up thinking that something could be happening to her that he can't protect her from."

"It almost makes me feel bad for all the times I've complained about missing my daughter when she's with her father. I mean, she's there right now, and yes I'd rather she was with me, but...for God's sake, I know where she is. I know I'll see her again in a couple of days. I know she's safe with someone else who would die before he'd hurt her. Zach -"

"Don't do that to yourself, honey," Charlotte said gently. "What Zach is going through doesn't diminish what you feel being separated from your daughter, nor should it. More than one person is allowed to feel bad at a time."

Serena couldn't help a soft laugh. "It does sound a little silly when you say it like that."

"I've had years to come up with that response. Without getting into specifics, it's a common misconception. Some people direct it outwards, others, like you - and Zach - direct it in towards yourselves."

"I can see it in Zach," she admitted, "but it's always harder to reflect on yourself."

"All that matters is, do _you_ miss Kira?"

"Of course."

"Then I'll tell you what, how about I stay for another ten minutes so you can call your daughter without worrying about my son? Assuming your ex is okay with it, of course."

"He would be," she replied reflexively. "It's part of our agreement, we don't restrict each other's calls to her."

"Then make the call. Today's one of those days that just makes you want to hug your children, isn't it? Or at least make sure they're okay?"

xxxxxxxxx

If Serena had been surprised to hear that her partner was headed to the roof of the precinct, it was nothing compared to what she saw there.

"Zach!" She tugged the gun from his unresisting fingers. "What the hell?"

He turned to look at her, and the pain in his eyes almost tore out her soul. "I wasn't going to do it."

"Then what _were_ you going to do?" she demanded, more harshly than she'd intended. Finding him turning the weapon in his hands had sent her adrenaline level skyrocketing.

"I was - thinking about it," he admitted after a moment, grimacing, knowing how she was likely to react. "I hurt so much, Serena. I don't know how I'm supposed to go on like this. But I'm not going to hurt myself. I can't. Apart from what it would do to all of you...my baby's out there somewhere and she needs me. I can't let her down."

She carefully set the weapon down, a safe distance from his reach, and then closed the gap between them. "Oh, Zach, I had no idea it was that bad. Why didn't you just say something?"

"Tell you your partner can barely hold the pieces of his life together? What good would that do?"

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "We're more than partners, Zach. We're friends. At least, I thought we were."

"We are," he sighed. "I didn't mean - I just meant, there's nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do. Why should I burden you with this when it wouldn't change anything?"

Serena suddenly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his thin frame. Without any conscious intent, his own arms came up around her shoulders, his long fingers clutching at her shirt, his head lowering to rest on top of hers. She knew the instant he began to cry, his back trembling, his tears soaking into her hair. "You're right that I can't bring her back to you, though I wish more than anything that I could. But that doesn't mean that I can't be here for you."

"What can you do?"

The words were rough and laced with pain, but Serena could take a bit of solace in the fact that that hadn't been a snarky remark, but a genuine question. "Whatever I can. But just tell me what's going on from now on, okay? I can't help you if I don't know what we're up against."

xxxxxxxxx

Finding her partner sitting alone in front of the river wasn't exactly a reassuring sight for Serena, not after what had taken place barely a week earlier. She approached him slowly, not wanting to startle him. "Zach?"

He looked up and, to her surprise, gave her a weak but genuine smile. "How'd you find me?"

"Took a guess," she replied, smiling too now that it seemed less likely her partner was preparing to do something stupid. "Or maybe asked a few vendors," she admitted. "You're pretty hard to miss."

"You're still worried about me."

"Last week, I actually thought you might kill yourself. Yeah, I'm worried."

"I'm not going to."

"Yes, you said. She's still out there somewhere, and -"

"No. I mean, yes, but that's not the whole reason anymore." He looked away, his eyes fixing on the horizon again. "It's been over two months since I lost my baby girl, and I miss her every moment of every day. And I will until I can hold her safe again. I'll never be able to move past it, but...I think I need to start living again. Even if that pain is always there, I can't let it stop the clock on my life anymore."

She knelt down beside her partner on the snow-covered grass, wrapping her arms around him. "That's good, Zach. That's really good."

He turned into the embrace. "That's why I'm here," he murmured. "Last week made me realize I need something more than going through the motions while waiting for something that may never come - I know the odds. So I came here to think about how that would work. Guess I lost track of time."

"Well, _some_ things never change, at least," she teased, and was gratified to again see him smile in response. "How's your thinking coming?"

"Slow but steady," he replied, turning his head to again look at the river. "It feels like I'm really seeing the world for the first time since December. That's part of why I got lost looking at the river. All my life I've always been so tuned in to everything going on around me, and these last few months it's been like all that just turned off. I've been walking around in some kind of extended daze." He took a long breath, letting the cold air fill his lungs. "It's nice to feel something besides pain again."

She hugged him close. "You deserve it, Zach."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow...this was a lot harder to write than I anticipated. Hands down the hardest scene was the rooftop. I don't think Nichols (or my conception of him) would actually do himself harm, but in researching for this story I found stories of people who considered suicide in desperate situations, even without ever making an attempt. I wrestled for a long time with the question of whether to include it or not, and ultimately decided I should, but it also gave rise the scene that shows Zach finally finding a measure of peace, which offsets the grimness of that a bit.
> 
> The airhead who can't keep track of dates is me shamelessly making fun of myself (for the record, I've actually forgotten what *month* it is more than once). I needed something to plant the seed in Serena's mind and that seemed to be a good way to do it.
> 
> Please review!


	7. Who Can Save Me?

It took what felt like an eternity for her to realize through a haze of pain and fear that something had happened to the man. He lay unmoving on the floor, apparently unaffected by the music blasting from the speakers with enough force to rattle the floorboards.

She backed away slowly, never taking her eyes off of him, waiting in dread for the moment where he would spring from the floor and hurt her again. But that moment never came. Two steps back became five, five became ten, and still the man remained motionless.

Terrified eyes darted around the room. The apartment had only one door, and that was locked with key lock, the keys to which were in his safe. She knew from the elevator that the apartment was on the tenth floor, much too high off the ground for her to be able to jump from a window.

But as she stared longingly through the windows, she caught sight of something besides tall buildings and the sky beyond just past one of them. A metal structure so close that it could only have been attached to the building. Her heart leaped into her throat as she crept over to the window in question, finally daring to look completely away from the man as she turned towards the glass, hoping against all hope that she would see what she thought was there.

Her hope was confirmed. _A fire escape._ She grabbed hold of the window and pulled to raise the frame. It didn't budge. She tried again, harder, but still no effect. In the next moment, she realized that the window was sealed with a keyed lock. And the key would be on the same ring as the door key.

Despair flooded her as she sank to the floor. She was inches from freedom, but she was trapped as solidly as if she was back in the concrete room. She leaned her head back against the window as tears filled her eyes.

Then, perhaps because of that action, a memory surfaced of a motherly woman standing over her, chiding her gently for leaning her head back against a window. " _You could lean harder than you think and the glass could break. And that would hurt a lot, wouldn't it?_ "

 _Not concrete. Glass. Glass breaks._ And with that thought, hope flickered in her once more.

The man had made a mess of his apartment before collapsing, and personal items were scattered all over the floor. She desperately scanned the ones near her until her eyes lighted on an iron bookend just a few yards away. She slid herself across the floor until she was able to wrap her fingers around it and pull it to her.

With a surge of courage and strength she hadn't known she still had in her, she swung the heavy object at the window. Even over the music, she could hear the crashing sound of the glass shattering on impact. She threw a terrified look back at the man, but thankfully, he didn't even stir. She swung the bookend again, this time right into the open hole, widening it enough that she thought she could fit through. She didn't dare risk trying to widen it further. Every swing was another chance for him to hear her.

The broken glass from the window had torn a gash in the screen, and she reached in without hesitation, pulling the wire mesh apart with her bare hands, desperate to destroy this last barrier between herself and freedom. She ripped and pulled until that, too, had a large enough hole to be used as a means of escape.

The metal of the fire escape was so cold that it was almost painful to touch, but that didn't even slow her down as she crawled out onto it. She was no stranger to pain, and she would take any amount of it without hesitation rather than spend one more second in that apartment.

She pulled herself to her feet and bolted down the fire escape, taking all nine flights of stairs without so much as stopping to catch her breath and then simply jumping on the ladder for the final floor, clinging to it as it descended towards the pavement under the force of her weight. As soon as it stopped moving, she jumped off and ran, aimlessly, into the quickly darkening streets of New York City.

xxxxxxxxx

Mike Logan ran a hand through his hair as he stopped before crossing the street. He hadn't had that much to drink at his favorite bar, but the combination of the alcohol and the sudden transition from the warm interior to the cold March night air was making him feel a little fuzzy.

Then something on the other side of the intersection caught his attention. He rubbed his eyes once to make sure he wasn't seeing things, but no. As improbable as this was, it was real.

A young girl was on the sidewalk, walking towards the opposite corner from where Mike was standing. She was moving in an unsteady way, as though she was trying to run but simply not able to sustain that pace for more than a couple of steps at a time. Despite the frigid weather, she was dressed in something that was so flimsy it resembled a woman's summer sleepwear more than regular clothing. No one else seemed to even notice her existence.

His old partner Lennie Briscoe would have pointed out that in New York City, people had stopped noticing things that were strange or out of place a long time ago, and usually Mike would have accepted that with maybe a roll of his eyes for the inconvenience it caused him. But not when a child was in trouble. If there was one thing in life he hated almost as much as a person who would hurt a child, it was a person who turned a blind eye to a child's suffering.

He bolted across the street without another thought, heedless of traffic and ignoring the cacophony of annoyed car horns that followed him, and stepped in front of the girl. "Hey, there, kid. Are you okay?"

She stopped short, looking up at him, and the look in her dark eyes cut him right to the soul. _I know that fear. I know how that feels._ "It's all right, darling," he soothed, softening his voice. "I just want to help."

She stood still, staring at him. He kept the gentle expression on his face, even as he internally fought the urge to be sick. This close, he could see the shape the little girl was in. She had no shoes, and her feet had left bloody prints down the sidewalk. Her hands were covered in a series of small cuts. Bruises were beginning to form on her upper arms. But what really turned his stomach were the streaks of blood on the insides of her legs. It hit him suddenly what else the tiny, sleeveless dress she was wearing could be. _God, no, no, she's just a little kid._

Plunging his hands into his coat pockets, he quickly pulled out everything that was inside them, stuffing it all into his pants pockets instead before slipping out of the coat altogether and laying it over the girl's shoulders. As he did, his fingers accidentally brushed against her face and she flinched away, deepening his suspicions about what had happened to her. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said softly. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

She shivered, pulling the coat tightly around her, but still said nothing. _She hasn't tried to run yet, I guess that's something._ "Listen, darling, I'm just going to call someone to help you, okay?"

"Okay," she whispered after a prolonged silence.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and hurriedly dialed. A crisp voice came through the line. " _911, what is your emergency?_ "

"There's a little girl in trouble. You need to send someone right away."

xxxxxxxxx

 _Containment nightmare_ were the first words that went through Olivia's head when she saw the street corner. Already the uniformed officers were working to create a perimeter and back the gawking civilians away from the scene, but more and more people were coming through the busy intersection and then stopping and moving closer, insatiably curious as to the cause of the flashing police lights.

Olivia quickly turned to her husband. "I'll call you when I know if I'm going to be home tonight, okay?"

"Okay." He leaned forward to kiss her. "Just don't let them work you too hard."

"Aye, aye, sir," she teased, a last lighthearted moment before she had to turn her mind to the dark world she faced every day in her work.

She pulled her badge from her purse and the crowd parted to let her through. Her partner was already inside, talking to another uniformed officer and an EMT, and he waved her over. "Martin here was just telling me that he had us called because he thinks her injuries were deliberately caused."

The EMT nodded. "I can tell you her what happened was no accident, what I saw just isn't consistent. That and the extreme fear we've witnessed - that tells me someone did something to her. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am."

"Good call," Olivia acknowledged. "I'd rather have a false alarm than not be called in where we're needed."

"Liv!" Nick called suddenly from where he was standing beside the stretcher. "You need to come see this!"

She hurried over to him, her date-night heels clicking against the pavement. "What is -"

But before she could finish the sentence, she saw exactly what had prompted the younger detective to call her over. "My God. Isn't that -"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Can we confirm?"

"I think I still have the picture on my phone." She scrolled quickly through her history until she found it, calling it up and showing it to Nick. "Yes, that's Andrea Marquez all right."

Nick glanced from the photo back to the little girl lying on the stretcher. "What the hell happened to her?"

Olivia just shook her head sadly. "I wish I knew. I'd better call Mu -" she abruptly cut off the automatic response, remembering all at once that the unit Lieutenant was temporarily out of reach resolving an old case of his. _Damn timing,_ she grumbled internally.

Then her partner gently squeezed her arm. "You've got this, Liv, I know you do."

She took a slow breath, able to center herself with his support grounding her. "Okay, Nick, you ride with her. I'll call Fin and Rollins to meet me at the squad room and then I'll call the foster father and bring him down to the hospital. Call me if anything changes."

"Got it," he replied with a small smile playing on his lips. "See, I told you you had this."

xxxxxxxxx

Zach just barely refrained from groaning out loud when his cell phone rang. He looked at the display long enough to see that it was an unfamiliar number before putting the phone to his ear. "Nichols."

" _Detective Nichols, it's Sergeant Benson from SVU._ "

Instantly, he was alert. "Sergeant. What is it? Is there news?"

" _Yes._ " A momentary pause. " _Detective, we found her._ "

He came to a dead halt in the lobby of One Police Plaza, not even noticing the dirty looks from the people behind who almost crashed into him. "By found, you...you mean -"

" _Oh, no, no._ " She had clearly picked up on the horrified tone in his voice. " _She's on her way to Mount Sinai. She's going to be okay._ "

The moment after he heard the words felt like breathing for the first time after holding his breath for eleven weeks. "Thank you," he whispered in between gasps of air. "Thank you, thank you."

After a moment, he realized she was speaking again. He forced himself to focus through the rush of relief. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

" _I asked you where you are_ ," she replied patiently. " _I can pick you up and bring you to the hospital._ "

"I'd appreciate that," he said softly. "I'm still at One Police Plaza. I'll wait out front."

He ended the call and walked out the front doors. The air was freezing but he didn't even feel it. All he could think was that after the torturous waiting, he was finally going to get what he wanted most. _I'm going to see my baby again._

xxxxxxxxx

The silence in the SUV was almost stifling, but Olivia wouldn't break it for anything. She knew that her passenger needed time to process everything he was feeling.

He had been able to tell as soon as he got into the front seat that Olivia was keeping something from him, even as he knew she hadn't outright lied to him, and he had been quick to push her on what it was. She had also known that not telling would only be delaying the inevitable, and by less than half an hour at that. But still, it had been heartbreaking to have to tell him about her injuries and their suspicions that the little girl had been sexually abused. He'd fallen completely silent after that, sitting with his head in his hands through the entire drive, and when she'd looked over to check on him she'd seen that his fingers were damp from his tears.

She only spoke once the car was parked in the hospital lot. "Are you ready?"

He nodded, wiping his face with his hand before he lowered it. "I need to see her."

She opened the door, stepping out onto the pavement. "Come on."

In the days and weeks to come, Zach wouldn't remember the walk from the car to the front door and through the hospital. His next clear memory was of the moment when she laid a gentle hand on his back, and her soft words "go ahead".

He pushed the door open, stepping over the threshold, and for a moment he simply allowed himself to take in the sight just beyond: Andrea, lying on the hospital bed, injured and disheveled but unmistakably alive and in front of him. In the next moment, as she turned her head to see who had opened the door, he bolted across the room to her side.

Her lips moved soundlessly a few times, and then finally a single word escaped her, barely a whisper and sounding as weak as she looked. "Zach?"

"Yes, sweetheart. It's me, I'm here now."

He reached a hand out towards her, wanting desperately to just take her in his arms but knowing that if she'd been hurt the way Sergeant Benson had suggested, that might be more frightening than comforting now. She reached back slowly, placing one little, bandaged hand in his much larger one. He knew that squeezing her hand would hurt her, so instead he gently ran the fingers on his other hand over the back of it. "You're safe now, baby girl. You're going to be okay."

"Detective Nichols," a doctor said from the doorway, "a word?"

He carefully set her hand back down on the bed. "I'll be right over here, Andrea. I promise." He reluctantly stood and walked across the small room. "Yes, what is it?"

"We still need to do a full examination on her," the doctor said, deliberately pitching her voice so it wouldn't carry, "and we'll need to clean out and re-dress the injuries on her hands and feet. It's not likely to be a pleasant process physically or emotionally, so I think it would be best if we sedated her for the process."

"Of course," he said immediately, matching the doctor's tone so Andrea wouldn't hear. "She shouldn't have to endure any more pain."

"We'll need a few consent forms signed."

"Fine. Just bring them in here." He looked back towards Andrea. "I'm not leaving her as long as she's awake."

xxxxxxxxx

"I'll be right beside you when you wake up."

Andrea nodded once, barely even flinching as the needle was slid into her arm. A few moments later, her eyes closed and she was out.

"That's it, baby," he whispered. "You just rest now." Then he very reluctantly stepped out of the procedure room.

Detective Amaro was standing just outside, his face drawn in an expression Zach recognized that he'd worn himself during some of his more difficult cases. "Detective," he said softly, "I hate to ask this, but could you stay with her for just a few minutes? I need to make a few calls."

He looked over the taller man skeptically. "To who?"

Zach was surprised by the question but answered anyway. "My partner, my mom, Megan Wheeler - she was the one who initially called in the report on the abduction. Why?"

Now Amaro couldn't help smiling. Even though he'd been taken aback by the question, he had answered before asking for clarification. "We still don't know that many details about what happened to Andrea. Until we have a better handle on the who and what of the situation, Sergeant Benson wants to be vigilant about giving out this information."

"I understand," he replied, silently vowing that he would stay by Andrea's side nonstop if necessary until her attackers were caught before he'd let anything else happen to her. "But all three of them are people I trust absolutely, with my life and, yes, Andrea's too."

"You can go ahead and call Detective Stevens and Megan Wheeler," he said after a moment. "We checked them both out as part of the investigation, and besides," he admitted, "I know Megan from her time in undercover, and I agree with you about her being able to be trusted. While you do that, I'll have my colleagues run a quick check on your mother. Assuming everything comes back okay, I'll give you the green light to call her too. But," he added, "I need you to stress to all of them that they can't repeat the information to anyone until they hear otherwise."

"Understood." He stepped out into the hallway and pressed a familiar speed dial.

A voice answered on the third ring. " _Hello? Zach?_ "

"Serena," he said, willing his voice to remain calm and even, "there's something I need to tell you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Andrea is safe. I never intended for this to end any other way. Smart little girl, though, isn't she? And she's had to learn to do things for herself. The woman she remembers is supposed to be the one other decent foster parent she had (see earlier chapters).
> 
> Logan wasn't a part of this story in the early drafts but I'd always intended to bring him into the series eventually and this seemed like a good way to work him into the arc. And those who know this character will know that he would never look past a child in trouble. We'll have a chance to really hear what he has to say about this situation in the next few chapters.


	8. More Questions Than Answers

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," the unit Sergeant said as she stepped into the interview room.

"It's no problem," Mike assured her. "You look a little shorthanded, you missing somebody?"

She couldn't help but smile. "Our Lieutenant is temporarily reassigned, so instead of him running things with four detectives, I'm running things with three. Nice catch."

He smiled too. "They didn't tell you? I used to be a cop."

"No, they didn't." She seated herself across from him. "I just need to take a statement from you."

"Right. So I was walking home..."

He explained to her, just as he had to the officers on scene, exactly what he had seen and what had happened when he went over to help. He described the visible injuries and her reactions to being touched or spoken to.

"A lot of people walked right by," she commented when Mike had come to the point in his story where the first responders had arrived. "You were across the street, and yet you noticed her _and_ stopped to help."

"You want to know why," he guessed, and she nodded. "Like I said, I was a cop, and the instincts don't go away. I notice things and people that aren't right, same as I'd notice if a potential suspect looked like he was ready to bolt. As for the why -" He stopped abruptly, drawing in a sharp breath. The idea of telling a virtual stranger about his abusive past was almost too painful to imagine. He'd done it once, and it had been agonizing. But now he was already raw from the memories the girl's gaze had brought to mind. He should tell her, he knew, but he couldn't.

He finally settled on a true, if partial, explanation that didn't force him to open those wounds further. "There was this case I worked when I was in homicide...Didi Lowenstein. Six-year-old girl, a victim of pretty much constant abuse. By the time we got to her, it was too late...she was technically alive but she'd been beaten so badly her brain was shutting down. All they could do was make her comfortable until she died. And what really killed me was the witness canvass. For once I was almost hoping we wouldn't find any witnesses. But we did," he added bitterly. "People who saw this little girl walking around without shoes on in the middle of winter, with bruises and burns, even saw her parents strike her, and never lifted a finger to help. I swore to myself that day that that would never be me." He ran a hand over his face, swallowing hard. He _had_ sworn as much over Didi's body, but it had really only been a renewal of a promise he'd made years previously in the face of every neighbor who'd turned a blind eye to his own suffering. "This is the first time I've actually been in that position, but...what kind of person would I be if I'd walked away?"

"But you didn't," she said gently. "You stopped to help."

"Yeah," he replied, not really comforted. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did. It's just...that should be the bare minimum of human decency, not something to be admired."

"I agree," she said with a sad smile. "Believe me, I know how you feel. I've worked my share of kid cases, and dealt with my share of witnesses who apparently went blind and deaf when confronted with a person in trouble."

He shook his head sadly, realizing the truth of her words. "I'm sure you have. I couldn't do what you do, Sergeant, but I'm glad there are people like you in this world who take it on."

xxxxxxxxx

It wasn't the first time Zach had sat beside a hospital bed and watched Andrea sleep, but as heartbreaking as her close call with appendicitis had been, this one was far, far worse. He'd seen the pain and fear in her huge eyes when he'd first come in, and he had heard what Sergeant Benson and the doctor had said. _Sexual assault...dehydrated...starvation...abrasions..._ it was almost too much to take in, how much she must have suffered.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and then she slowly licked her lips. He gently took her hand in his; wherever she'd been for the last three months, he didn't want her to think for a second that she was back there. "Andrea?" he called out softly. "Andrea, sweetheart, are you awake?"

Her eyes opened slowly. "Zach?" she whispered, just as she had when she'd first seen him.

Again he longed to take her in his arms and hold her tight, but he forced that aside. _It's about her, not me._ "Yes, baby girl, I'm here. I'm here now."

She was looking mostly at him, but he saw her eyes dart over to the bedside table and the Pedialyte the doctor had left there. "You're thirsty?" It didn't surprise him, dehydrated as he'd been told she was. He tore the bottle open and pushed a plastic straw into it, bringing the other end to her lips. "Here you go, honey. Drink."

She immediately began sucking at the straw, gulping the liquid down with such speed he was afraid she would make herself sick. "Easy, easy," he soothed. "Not so fast. There's no hurry, and you can have as much as you want."

She drank almost half of the large bottle before she released the straw from her lips. He set it back on the table. "If you want more later, it's right here."

She nodded once but didn't speak.

"I have something here for you." He reached down to grab the bag that Serena had packed for him when he'd told her the news. Right on top was the squirrel he'd bought for her the last time she was in the hospital. He held it up so she could see it and then laid it down beside her. She pulled it tight, sniffing its fur. When she looked up again, he could see that her dark eyes were filling with tears. "Andrea, what is it? What's wrong? You can tell me."

"I want to go home," she whispered finally, immediately flinching as though she expected her admission to anger him.

"I know you do," he soothed. "But the doctor says you have to stay here for a few more hours. Just a few more hours, baby, that's all."

She shook her head slowly, a few tears breaking free. Zach's concern skyrocketed. "Andrea?"

"I can't go home ever again," she choked out.

"What are you talking about?" He couldn't keep the shock and confusion out of his voice.

"They said...they said we were bad and dirty now," she whispered. "That we shouldn't even try to run away because nobody would ever want us again."

" _Andrea._ " Her name came through his lips in a series of strangled sounds.

She stared at him in silence for a long moment before she finally said it, so quietly that he had to lean forward to hear it. "You don't want to touch me anymore."

Tears sprang to his own eyes. "Oh, Andrea, baby, no. I just - I know you're hurting a lot right now, and I thought it might hurt more if I touch you, or scare you."

She looked up at him in complete disbelief, as if unable to conceive of the idea that his only thought had been concern, that she wasn't going to be rejected. He slowly moved over to sit on the bed and gathered her up in his arms, ready to stop in an instant if she gave him any sign she was uncomfortable. Instead she crawled forward, burrowing deeper into his embrace.

"Oh, baby," he whispered, wrapping his arms securely around her. "I'm so sorry you thought that. They lied to you, sweetheart, they lied. You're my little girl and you always will be. Nothing in the world could make me stop loving you." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I'll be right here with you this whole time, I promise, and when they say you can leave the hospital, we'll go home together."

"Home," she whispered, a note of wonder in her voice.

"That's right, baby. Home."

He felt a dampness against his chest and realized she was now crying in earnest, crying with a silence learned from years of abuse. He was familiar with this by now, but it broke his heart every time just the same. He began to cry too, rocking her like a baby in his arms. "You're safe now," he whispered. "I'll never let anyone hurt you again."

xxxxxxxxx

"Are you sure you want to be here for this?"

Zach stared through the one-way glass at Andrea, sitting on a child-size armchair with her toy squirrel held tight in her arms. "I have to. I promised I'd be there for her."

"I can only imagine how you feel," Amaro said gently, "but I'm not sure you realize just how bad this is going to be."

"I don't care," he insisted. "It's going to be worse for her. This isn't about me."

"If you change your mind, there's a lounge at the end of the hall where you can wait." Amaro clearly realized he wasn't going to change the other detective's mind. "I'll be in the room with her, but Sergeant Benson will be here." He tapped his earpiece. "I'll be able to hear her through this, so if there's something you think I need to know, just tell her."

He nodded, steeling himself for what was to come. He had no doubt that the detective was right; this was going to be bad. But he was equally sure of what he had told the man. He needed to be present for Andrea, no matter how much it hurt.

"Hi, Andrea," Amaro was saying, his voice coming through the speaker that connected the two rooms. "You remember me, right? Nick?"

"Yes. I remember."

"That's good," he said encouragingly. "I just need to ask you some questions, okay?"

"Okay."

"Do you remember the last day you were at your school?"

"Uh huh," she mumbled. "Zach drove me to school and told me Megan was going to pick me up. He said he had a surprise for me when he got home."

On the other side of the glass, the man in question closed his eyes momentarily. _I did, Andrea. And I'll give it to you as soon as I know it's still possible._

"What happened after school, Andrea?"

"We went outside when the homework time was done because it was not very cold," she said, confirming what the school had told the detectives. "I wanted to finish my book but they said I had to come outside too, so I sat on the bench by the fence."

"She - she loves to read," Zach choked out, not really intending the words for anyone in particular. "That's what she was doing in the park that day she saw the Park Strangler kill his last victim."

"I was reading and I heard someone say my name," Andrea said softly. "I looked up and..." She curled into herself tighter, beginning to shiver.

"Andrea, you're safe now," Amaro reassured her gently. "Whoever it is, they can't hurt you anymore. Who was the person who said your name?"

"My old mother," she whispered. "The one I lived with before foster care. I was so surprised that I stopped before I ran away," she whispered, ducking her head so that her hair fell over her face. "I should have just run."

"No," Zach whispered. "No. It's not her fault."

"Andrea, this isn't your fault." Amaro echoed Zach's agonized thoughts. "Can you tell me what she did next?"

"She grabbed my hair." Andrea reached a hand up to touch her long, black tresses. "Then she put her hand over my face and pulled me into a car trunk." She shivered again. "The car started moving. Then it stopped but I was still inside. I was inside for a really long time. I was hungry and thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to cry because she would get mad. She always gets mad when I cry. That's when she used to whip me."

Zach had to choke back a sob. Andrea had shared very few details of her early childhood, and though he'd known it was abusive, this detail was one more image to make him sick. _No wonder she's so quiet when she cries._

"Instead I tried to hear music," she was saying. "Zach plays music a lot and I like it, so I tried to hear it in my head. It helped me not feel so scared. But then she came back and got mad because I had a nosebleed from when she grabbed me and because I wet my pants. She said I was a disgusting mess and I messed up her car too, and she hit me before she took me inside. She said that I just took and took from her and I had to pay her back for everything she gave me. Then she showed me to the man." Andrea was now shivering so forcefully that it was a miracle the entire chair wasn't moving with her. Zach's forehead was pressed to the glass as tears ran down his face. "She said I was his now. He gave her money and then he gave me a shot. I felt sleepy, I couldn't stay awake."

It was clear she was struggling more and more the deeper she got into the story. Amaro offered her a juice box, which she accepted and sipped at before continuing. "When I woke up, I was tied to a chair with no clothes on. The man was there, and so was another man. They said I was one of their girls now and I had to do whatever they said or they would hurt me." Silent tears were beginning to slip from beneath her eyelids. "Then they put me in the room in the basement with the other girls."

"Other girls?" Benson asked, speaking for the first time since the start of the interview. "Nick -"

He nodded once to acknowledge that he'd heard her and knew where she was going. "Tell me about the room in the basement. How many other girls were there?"

"Thirteen. It was a room with concrete walls and no windows. There was a hole in the floor for us to use like a toilet. Sometimes they would spray water on us from the ceiling, they said it was to keep us clean but it was so fast it hurt. Still we were all so thirsty all the time that we would try to drink some. It was really cold in there, and we didn't get blankets or clothes. We had to stay in there all the time unless they wanted us to do something."

Even with the distance between them, Zach could see the look on the detective's face. He was steeling himself for what would come next. "What did they want you to do, Andrea?" he asked finally.

She pulled her knees to her chest, curling in on herself. "They dressed us up. They made us do things with men...have sex with them," she whispered, her forehead pressed to her knees. "Sometimes at the men's houses, sometimes in the upstairs of the house. They took movies of us upstairs too. If we left the house we had to wear blindfolds until we got in a van with no windows. It hurt a lot, but they would hurt us even worse if we didn't do what we were supposed to. Some days, I - I just wanted to die so it would all be over."

Zach couldn't help but cry out. "She's just a baby," he gasped when he could speak again. "How could anyone do this to her?"

"Let's talk about what happened last night." Amaro's voice echoed from the speakers; the detective sounded choked up himself. "Where were you? In the house?"

She shook her head, her face still buried. "An apartment. There was a man. He was really, really mad for no reason. He was throwing things all over the place and kept grabbing me and throwing me down in different places. Then he just fell down and stopped moving. His door was locked and so were the windows, but I broke the window out to the fire escape. I hurt my hands when I tore the screen but I couldn't stop, I had to get out. Then I just ran and kept going until the man on the street stopped me."

"The man on the street...you mean the one who was with you when the police and the ambulance came?"

She nodded. "I was scared, but he was nice. He didn't hurt me. He gave me his coat."

"Okay, Andrea, you're doing great. Just a couple more questions, I promise. What can you tell me about the apartment? Was it in a tall building or a smaller one"

"A tall one. It was on the tenth floor," she said, relaxing ever so slightly. "I saw the elevator numbers. His apartment number was eleven G. And the man was playing really loud music."

"That's really good. And do you know what time it was when you got out?"

"Not exactly. But the sun was going down."

"That's great," he said again. "And you know what? Those are all my questions. You're done now. You did really good."

Zach looked over at Benson, his tear-filled eyes silently begging for permission to enter the room and hold his child. She nodded once and he sprang towards the door, nearly crashing into Amaro who was coming out.

The moment she saw who was in the room now, Andrea jumped up, running into her foster father's arms. "I'm sorry, Zach...I'm sorry..."

"No apologizing," he whispered into her hair as he pulled her close, still sobbing openly at the thought of the horrors she had endured. "It's not your fault. I'm so sorry I let this happen to you...I'm sorry I didn't find you."

"Can we go home now?" Andrea still sounded scared, but she was apparently beginning to remember that Zach allowed her to ask questions and speak her mind, even encouraged it.

"Yes, baby," he whispered. "We can go home."

xxxxxxxxx

Amaro barely made it into observation and got the door closed before he fell to his knees, gasping and trying to get himself under control. Olivia rushed to his side, laying a hand on his back. "Easy, Nick. Deep breaths, try to slow it down. In...and out...and in..."

She coached him through breathing until he seemed to be able to handle it on his own, looking up and sitting back on his heels. Olivia was still kneeling beside him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he said automatically, then sighed, dropping his face into his hands. "No," he admitted after a moment. "I don't think so." He swallowed hard, fighting a desire to be sick. "You've been at this a long time. Does it ever get easier?"

"No," she replied bluntly. "Even after sixteen years, there are still those cases that cut through all my defenses. It's the reason so many people aren't cut out for this job." She squeezed his shoulder. "But you are. I've seen what you're capable of. The trick isn't learning how not to feel, it's learning how to live with the things you do feel."

"She reminds me so much of Zara," he whispered. "How do I live with that?"

"First, you take some time to feel what you're going to feel. In this case, that includes Skyping your daughter. Talk to a shrink if you need to, there's no shame in that. Then, when you're ready channel your feelings into taking down the prick who did this. It doesn't get rid of the feelings, but it'll help you sleep at night."

"No problems there," he replied with an expression that could almost be described as feral. "Prison's too good for the monsters that did this."


	9. Coming Home

Zach carried Andrea into the house, careful not to let her bandaged feet come into contact with the doorframe. The doctors had told him that the injuries to her feet had likely been caused by stepping on something sharp as she ran barefoot through the streets of New York, and that it would likely be painful for her to walk for a few days. All Zach knew was that he would gladly carry her everywhere if it would spare her one second of further pain.

Andrea began to cry again as soon as they stepped through the front door, burying her head in his shoulder. He wrapped her up even tighter in his arms. "What's wrong, baby?"

"I thought I'd never be back here again," she whispered. "I thought I would live in the basement forever."

Tears pricked at his own eyes. "I never stopped looking for you, Andrea, and I never would have. I would have looked and looked until I found you, in the basement or anywhere else." He ran his fingers through her long hair. "Now, what do you want to do first? Are you hungry?"

"Yes," she whispered. "And - and I want to take a bath. If that's okay?"

"Of course it's okay." It would mean redoing the bandages on her hands and feet, but he couldn't think of anything he cared less about in that moment than the prospect of having to repeat a simple task. "How about I get you set up, and then while you're taking a bath I make us something to eat?"

She was silent for a moment, and he could see her biting her lip. "Can you...?" she began finally.

"Can I what?" he prompted gently.

"Can you stay with me?" she blurted out finally.

"Oh, sweetheart, of course." _Poor baby, she's terrified._ "Of course I'll stay, if that's what you want."

xxxxxxxxx

"Nick." A hand came to rest on his shoulder. "Earth to Amaro."

He looked up at Rollins, smiling slightly. "Sorry, Amanda. I guess I zoned out for a minute there. What's up?"

"We've got a problem," she said bluntly. "I'm going over the files from when Andrea was first abducted, looking for clues - Nick, she told you her mother took her?"

"That's right." Almost immediately, he realized what she was saying, the pieces finally coming together. "You're right. Liv and I cleared Linda Marquez. She had an alibi. Damn, how did I miss that?"

"Sounds like it was a pretty emotional interview," she replied compassionately. "That's what tapes and notes are for, Nick. So we can go back and catch anything we missed."

He was still scowling at the file. "Everything in me says that little girl told us the truth. But Linda's story was corroborated. This doesn't make sense."

"Who was her alibi witness?" Rollins asked, mirroring Amaro's expression.

"Her boss," he said after thinking for a moment. "Not the kind of relationship that usually includes fabricated alibis."

"Not usually." Fin spoke up from his desk. "But I don't think this situation is usual."

Rollins and Amaro immediately turned to face him. "What have you got?" she asked.

"Linda Marquez has a record. Technically, she was only charged with fraud, but I get a sense that's just the tip of the iceberg. She has a dropped child abuse charge, filed at the same time as the fraud complaint."

"Which was when?"

Three pairs of eyes turned to their Sergeant; they hadn't even realized she'd come out her office until she spoke. Fin glanced back to his computer for the answer to her question. "May 09. And wait till you hear who the lead detective was."

xxxxxxxxx

"John!"

The gray-haired DA's investigator stopped for a moment, looking around. _Surely they don't mean me?_ His first name was certainly common enough. And yet, there was something about the voice...

"John!" the voice called out again. It was closer this time, not echoing so much, and that allowed him to recognize it. He turned to see two members of his former unit running towards him.

"Hey, Liv. Hey, Nick," he called out as they approached. "It's awfully early for a visit."

"You're getting soft, old man," Nick teased. "Forgetting what it's like when you work a case so long that late becomes early."

He laughed. "So, what can I do for two of New York's _finest_ Finest?"

"We need to pick your brain about an old case," Olivia explained. "Is there somewhere we can sit down for a bit? This could take awhile, it's a complicated situation."

"Tell you what," he said with a warm smile. "Let's hit the coffee shop across the street and I'll buy you each a cup. If you've been up all night, you need one, and I know well what SVU coffee tastes like."

In minutes, they were set up at a small table, steaming cups in front of each of them. Munch took a drink of his before he brought them back around to the matter at hand. "So, this case."

"Right." Olivia took a long sip of her own coffee, relishing the taste before she had to revisit the horrors of the past few hours. "Do you remember a woman named Linda Marquez?"

"Linda?" he repeated in surprise. "Damn straight I remember her. One of the most frustrated cases I've ever had to deal with. What's she done now?"

"You don't want to know," Nick replied, suppressing a shudder at the memory of Andrea's horrific story. "What did she do five years ago?"

The older man's face became uncharacteristically hard. "She walked into a domestic violence shelter carrying her bruised and bleeding four-year-old daughter. She said her fiance threw the girl down a flight of stairs, she was trying to get away from him, she didn't have any resources - you get the picture. Then a second employee walks in and recognizes her. The employee had transferred to that shelter from one in New Jersey, and Linda had come to the Jersey shelter with a similar story the year before."

"So...she went back to him?" Olivia asked. "That's bad judgement, but it's not a crime."

"Except the two stories didn't match at all. Linda claimed she'd been with this guy for a year, and the other shelter had records of her still being in one of their housing units up until eight months before she showed up at the shelter here. After that, it all kind of came apart. She'd pulled that scam over a dozen times at different shelters in the tri-state area. It turned out _she_ was the one abusing her daughter, beating her until she bled just so the story would be convincing. She picked shelters that gave grants to help women get back on their feet; she'd take the grant money, pretend to be doing great, and then fall off the shelter's radar so slowly that they wouldn't suspect anything. She was arrested for fraud and child abuse."

"But the child abuse charges were dropped, according to the file." Nick was frowning. "It sounds like the case was solid. What happened?"

"Linda happened," he all but growled. "Her and her high-priced mouthpiece. The girl wasn't considered swearable, and the ADA was concerned that her testimony wouldn't hold up under cross because she'd repeated her mother's lies to the shelter workers. That left us without a witness to the actual commission of the abuse. The defense attorney poked just enough holes in the testimony that Linda was able to take the stand and argue that _she_ was the victim. A couple of the jurors bought it, and she got a hung jury. They retried her, and the same thing happened, so the ADA let her plead to fraud just to make the case go away. All the prosecution witnesses were furious," he added as an afterthought. "It was me, a doctor, and the shelter workers, and we wanted her locked in a dark cage for a long time."

"And the ADA didn't?" Nick asked. "Who did you have?"

"Some wet-behind-the-ears rookie," he said disgustedly. "Cabot was our primary but she had her hands full between a serial killer up for trial and that messy case with the stalker who turned out to be the judge's son - you remember, Liv." She nodded, and he continued. "Apparently, the DA thought it would be an open-and-shut case and so he assigned a junior ADA to handle it. Big mistake, she was no match for Linda. Whatever this woman's done now, that mess in the DA's office is the reason she's free to cause trouble."

"Let me ask you something," Olivia interrupted, sensing a need to head off one of her old colleague's rants. "Right now, we've got accounts that put her in two places at once. Do you think she'd be able to fake an alibi?"

Munch frowned. "Who alibied her?"

"Her boss," Nick supplied. "Not exactly the kind of relationship where you'd expect the guy to put his ass on the line for her."

"Unless he has something bigger to lose if he doesn't." He leaned forward slightly, drawing the other two in with him. "I always suspected there was more going on than the shelter scam. When we tossed her place, we found evidence suggesting that she was blackmailing married men with a paternity scam - telling them all that they were the father of her baby and threatening to take them to court unless they paid up under the table. But the evidence wasn't conclusive, and if there's one thing all blackmail victims have in common, it's that they have something to hide. No one was coming forward, so charges were never filed because we wouldn't have been able to prove anything. If her boss gives her an alibi but your evidence says she was somewhere else, I'd bet serious money that she blackmailed him into it."

"Thanks, John," Olivia said sincerely, standing and reaching out her hand to shake his.

He stood and took it, but only to pull her into a hug. "Anytime, Liv."

xxxxxxxxx

"There you go," Zach said soothingly as he finished brushing out Andrea's damp hair. "Do you feel better now, baby?"

"Yes," she whispered, leaning into his chest.

"I know you're hungry," he continued. He'd been able to tell from carrying her that she'd lost weight, but when she'd undressed for her bath, he'd realized she was nearly skeletal. "What do you want to eat?"

"I, um...whatever you want," she mumbled. He didn't have to see her face to know she was scared again.

"Andrea, sweetheart," he soothed, "you're home now. You remember how things work here, don't you? I want you to have what _you_ want. I won't ever hurt or punish you for asking for that." He rocked her gently. "What's something you've wanted to eat for a long time?"

"Strawberry pancakes," she said finally. "With whipped cream and chocolate chips."

"Of course." He should have guessed that, he realized; that was one of Andrea's favorite foods, and the one she always wanted when she was upset. "Let's see what we can do about that, hmm?"

Much as he'd felt the need to leave her room as it had been, he'd been likewise compelled to leave all of the foods she had enjoyed, the ones that he'd kept around specifically for her, exactly where they had been in the cupboard and the fridge. The strawberry pancake mix was right where he remembered it being, and he quickly whipped up a batch. As soon as the first pancakes were fully cooked, he set them down in front of Andrea, placing the bag of chocolate chips and the can of whipped cream in front of her. "There you go, baby. Eat as much as you want."

She devoured almost two-thirds of the recipe's yield, and he sat across from her, nibbling at his own pancakes. He liked them well enough, though not nearly as much as she did, but right then all he wanted to do was watch her eat. Irrational though it was, he couldn't shake the feeling that if he stopped watching her, she would be gone again.

Her eyes were slipping shut by the time she'd finished her food, and he gathered her up in his arms. "You ready to go to bed?"

She nodded, nearly falling asleep against his chest as he carried her up the stairs. "Here," he said as he laid her on the bed. "See, your room is exactly like you left it, just waiting for you to come home." He pulled the blankets over her, running his hand over her back and hair. "Rest, baby. You're safe now, you can rest. Just go to sleep. I'll take care of you."

It was only when she was asleep that he allowed his tears to fall for the third time in less than a day.

xxxxxxxxx

"Detective Tutuola, Detective Rollins." The senior detective pointed first at himself and then his partner. "SVU."

"SVU?" an officer repeated, stepping out of the apartment. "Martin Russo, out of the 2-5."

"What have we got?" Rollins asked him.

"Probably not a case for sex crimes," the man replied wryly. "Frankly, I don't think it's a case period. Super called it in because the fire escape window was broken, but it was broken from inside the apartment. This guy was high as a kite, trashed his apartment and passed out cold - that's where we found him, face-down in the living room. So why does SVU even get called in on, at most, a smash-and-grab?"

"We think it was a little more than that," Rollins said grimly. "We need to cordon the entire apartment off as a crime scene ASAP."

xxxxxxxxx

"You lied to us."

The man shrank back into his chair under the fierce gazes of the two detectives. "I -"

"Please don't bother to deny it," Olivia continued. "We know Linda Marquez wasn't here when you said she was. We have ironclad evidence that places her somewhere else." It was a bit of a stretch, but she was banking on him not knowing that. "She convinced you to to lie for her. What did she say?"

The fight went out of the man, his head slumping forward. "It only happened once," he whispered. "I got drunk at a company Thanksgiving party, and we ended up - you know. I tried to forget about it, but then she came to me a few weeks later after work and showed me pictures she'd taken. She said that if anyone asked, I had to tell them she was in the office that afternoon or she was going to show the pictures to my wife."

"And you didn't ask," Nick said harshly.

"She said I didn't need to know, I didn't press the issue. She was holding my marriage over my head, for God's sake. What was I supposed to do?"

"Be a little less selfish," Nick grumbled.

"Hey! You're not going to tell my wife, are you?"

"That is the _least_ of your problems," Olivia informed him. "You're an accessory to kidnapping and human trafficking. A lot more than your marriage hangs in the balance now."

"Human trafficking?" he sputtered. "I told one lie!"

"You covered for Linda." Olivia punched every word. "That makes you an accessory after the fact to everything she did during the time you provided her with an alibi."

"Cooperate," Nick said, "and we can talk to the DA about knocking the charges down to simple obstruction. It's the best offer you're going to get. Your wife is going to find out either way."

"Okay," he said finally. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

xxxxxxxxx

"Nice catch on the apartment, you two."

"Hey," Fin objected. "It's not us two. Credit goes to Amanda. She's the one who thought of scanning the crime reports in the area."

The blonde shrugged. "I just thought, if the window was broken, someone might have seen and called it in. And the girl said the music was blasting, so I thought there might have been noise complaints. I guessed at about how far she could have walked and then had TARU set the system to cross-check reports in that radius against what we know - the apartment number, the fact that the broken window was on the fire escape, you get the idea. Sure enough, this guy's apartment flagged. CSU's there now, and he's in holding. We're waiting for him to sober up before we question him."

"Good," Olivia said approvingly. "Meanwhile, we need to have our next steps in place. This scumbag is just the tip of the iceberg."

"You want to go after these guys." Nick's tone made it clear he was in full agreement with this idea. "The whole ring."

"Yes," the Sergeant confirmed. "Beginning with the house. Andrea may be safe at home, but we know from her statement that the traffickers are holding other girls. Our first priority has to be to try and save them. You three keep chasing down the leads we have so far. I'm calling the Commissioner to put together a task force. We need more people on this thing. A lot more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as you may notice from this chapter, this story will have two somewhat parallel parts for the next few chapters, though they'll cross occasionally. One, of course, is Andrea and Zach, and the other is the investigation and attempt to bring down the traffickers.
> 
> And yes, I always intended for Linda to be the kidnapper. I just knew I had to have the detectives clear her or it would make them look incompetent. Since Linda's an established blackmailer (see A New Reality), it didn't seem inconceivable that she'd blackmail someone for an alibi.


	10. Sleepless Nights and Weary Mornings

The first thing Zach noticed when he started awake was that he wasn't in his own bed. The second was that he was fully clothed and on top of the covers. And the third thing he noticed, just as he began to get his bearings, was that he was alone. It was Andrea's bed, he was realizing, but Andrea wasn't there.

He reached across to the other side of the bed, where she had been lying when he had fallen asleep. The pillow was still warm; she'd been there recently. Then he saw, beneath the pushed-back covers on her side, the large wet spot on the sheet.

Realization hit him, his eyes filling with tears once again. "Andrea?" he called out, already on his feet. "Andrea, honey, are you in here? Can you answer me?"

"Here."

The tiny voice came from the corner between the bed and the wall. Zach immediately rushed over to her. As he'd suspected, her pajamas, too, were soaked. She was curled up, knees to her chest, and her face was streaked with tears.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, beginning to rock back and forth. "I'm sorry."

"Shh, it's okay," he soothed. "It's okay. It's not your fault." He cupped her cheek in his hand, wiping some of her tears with his thumb. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"Yes." She began to tremble. "Then I woke up and...I know I'm not supposed to wet the bed," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to."

"Oh, baby, I know you didn't. Sometimes when you're scared, especially when you're also asleep, those things just happen, and it isn't your fault. Come on," he added gently. "How about you take a bath, and then you can sleep in my bed tonight, okay?"

She was silent through the bath and while he dressed her in fresh pajamas. But when he carried her into his room, she tensed. "What if I...what if I wet your bed too?"

"Then we'll deal with it," he said as he set her gently on the bed. "Andrea, I mean it when I say I know it's not something you have any control over. And I mean it when I say I'm not mad at you."

"Why?"

It was the same question she'd asked him in the hospital after her near-death from appendicitis. _Why do you care?_ _Why does anyone?_ It broke his heart just as it had then. He pulled her into his lap, holding her as tightly as he thought he could without hurting her. "Because I know that accidents happen," he began softly. "Because I don't expect you to be perfect. Nobody is. And because I love you. Not some image of a perfect child, but _you_ , Andrea, exactly as you are."

"I love you too," she whispered into his chest. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you too." The words felt inadequate on his lips. _Missed you_ barely seemed to scratch the surface of the huge hole her disappearance had left in his heart. "I missed you every day."

He could see that Andrea's eyes were slipping shut, but she kept forcing them back open. He rubbed her back gently. "It's okay, sweetheart, you can go back to sleep. We'll talk more in the morning." She tensed a bit, shivering, and he realized his mistake. "Oh, baby, you're scared, aren't you?"

Her silence was as good as a confirmation to him. He carefully slid down until he was lying on his back on the bed, holding Andrea so her head rested on his shoulder. "You're safe now," he whispered. "I'm right here. I won't let anyone hurt you."

xxxxxxxxx

"Is it time already?"

Nick started at the voice, turning to the blonde detective lying beside him. "No, we still have a few hours," he assured her. "Go back to sleep, Amanda. We've got a long day coming."

She pushed herself up on her elbows, ignoring his last suggestion. "Yeah, we do, so why does it look like you haven't slept at all?"

He sighed, slumping down to the bed so he was at eye level with her. He had tried to sleep after Olivia had sent everyone home to get some rest before the task force briefing that was set for five o'clock the next morning, but he had quickly gotten the idea that that wasn't going to happen. "I can't. I close my eyes, I see Andrea's face. Then I see Zara's face, and where my mind goes after that..." he shuddered, the images too terrible to put into words.

She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, drawing him close, and their lips met in a breathtaking kiss. Nick let out something halfway between a gasp and a laugh as they separated. "Do that again and I don't think either one of us will be getting any more sleep tonight."

"Right. Of course." She slumped back against the pillows. "But, you know, we might be able to sleep a little longer if we can cut down on the amount of time it takes us to get ready in the morning. For instance, by not taking turns at the shower?"

She buried her head deeper in the pillow, smiling as she began to fall back asleep. Nick smiled too, deciding there was really no need to remind her that the house had two showers. For the first time, he thought he might actually sleep that night, with something finally running through his head besides the images he so desperately wanted to forget.

xxxxxxxxx

"Sergeant Benson? I'm Captain Hannah, Major Case."

She turned, reaching out on instinct to shake his hand. Unfortunately, her instinct was followed a moment too late by her memory of the files she was carrying, all of which fell to the floor. Face red with embarrassment, she bent to pick them up. "Sorry, Captain."

A hand came into her field of vision, helping to gather up the files. "Don't worry about it, Sergeant," Hannah said kindly. "It happens to everyone, and I can imagine you've had a long night. Let me guess, you sent your people home while you stayed here and finished putting all the pieces in place."

She looked up at him in astonishment. "How'd you know?"

"Almost all the new or temporary COs I know have done it," he said with a smile, handing Olivia a stack of her files. "Eventually you learn to delegate. Everyone stays a little later, but no one has to stay all night."

"I'll keep that in mind." She smiled back.

"Speaking of putting pieces in place, the original reason I wanted to talk to you was concerning one of my detectives. I've brought five total, two sets of partners and one who's flying solo right now, her partner is on personal leave. She's one of the best I have, I want her on this, but I don't like the idea of her going without a partner on a case like this, and I can't spare anyone else. So..."

"You want to know if I can pair her up with someone." At his nod, she continued. "As it happens, I have an odd number right now too. I can team her up with Amaro, that'll keep me from having to break up any established partners."

"Captain!"

"Perfect timing," Hannah said with a smile, seeing the brunette woman running down the hall. "Sergeant Benson, this is Detective Stevens. She's the one I was just telling you about."

"We've met," Olivia said before turning to the newcomer. "You're working this case?"

"Is there a problem?" Hannah asked, sounding taken aback.

"That's what I wanted to tell you, Captain," Stevens interrupted. "Have you looked at the file yet?"

"Just the summary, why?"

She pushed a piece of paper into his hands. "This is why."

He began to read, his jaw dropping after a few lines. "My God. This is Andrea's case?"

Serena nodded, and it was only then that Olivia noticed how pale she was. "I didn't know either. Zach told me she was hurt and in the hospital, but he didn't share any details and I didn't ask. No wonder he didn't want to talk about it," she added. Then she looked from him to the SVU Sergeant. "You are not seriously thinking of pulling me off this, are you?"

"It's crossed my mind," Olivia replied. "You are a bit close to this, Detective."

"I know," she admitted, "but I - I need to do this. For Andrea and - and for Zach. Losing her nearly destroyed him." She turned her head slightly, but not before Olivia saw the tears she was trying to hide. "They need to pay."

"Serena," her Captain said gently, "I think that's what Sergeant Benson is worried about."

Olivia barely heard him. Her own mind was churning. She knew that, by the book, she should pull Serena off the case. But she knew what the detective was feeling, knew that it was the same thing she had felt after Elizabeth had been raped several years earlier, after watching Elliot break down, unable to bear the thought of his child's suffering. "Okay," she said finally. "You can work the case for now. But if I think your judgement is at all affected, I will pull you off. Fair?"

"Fair," she agreed. "Thank you."

xxxxxxxxx

 _Okay_ , Olivia thought to herself _, Cragen was right. This is more nerve-wracking than giving a presentation. At least with presentations, no lives are imminently on the line._

She swallowed, forcing her lips to move. "I want to thank you all for being here today," she began. "I know this is early for a lot of us, and some of you are here on your days off. Before this is done today, I expect that most of us will be working some hours we're not used to. I just want you all to know that your efforts are appreciated."

Many of the officers were smiling and nodding, grateful for the recognition, and she relaxed slightly as she moved into the briefing. "Here's what we have so far. A little more than a day ago, nine-year-old Andrea Marquez was found wandering the streets in a Midtown neighborhood." Olivia skimmed over the details of the girl's statement, pointedly avoiding looking at either her regular partner or at Serena Stevens. She was afraid that if she saw the pain in their faces, she wouldn't be able to finish.

"We don't know everything yet," Olivia concluded. "What we do know is that somewhere in this city, thirteen young girls are being held captive. We also know that by now, their captors may know that something is going on. Our priority is to find this house. I have a press conference in half an hour; TARU is setting up a phone bank and a confidential tip line. Some of you will be answering the phones and screening tips; the rest will be on the investigation team. The investigation team will be in pairs, stationed at strategic points throughout the city in unmarked cars. Meanwhile, Captain Hannah and I will question the suspect in custody to see if we can narrow down the search area or come up with something to help filter the tips. If a credible tip comes in, the nearest pair will investigate. If something looks suspicious, the pair will call for backup."

She stopped momentarily, drawing a slow breath to prepare for what came next. "I _cannot_ emphasize that enough. These are potentially dangerous people, and we don't know what they might do if they're cornered. If you find anything, _you call for backup and wait until they get there_. We will have rapid response teams on standby. Until they arrive, you are not to take action. That's an order. I will not lose anyone to these monsters, understood?" Nods and murmurs of affirmation followed her statement. "Okay, then. Your commanding officers will be handing out your assignments. Dismissed."

"Nice work, Liv." Nick was quickly making his way to her, Serena close behind him.

"That was especially meant for you two," she replied with a very slight smile. "You're more emotionally invested in this than anyone. I'm expecting you two to use your heads, okay? I know you can."

"Copy that, Sergeant." But Nick was smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who hasn't read the entire series (although you really should, it makes more sense that way), Elizabeth is Elliot's daughter, and she becomes the victim of a rape in the first story, Close To Home. At that time, Elliot is still married to his first wife, so he and Olivia are only friends.
> 
> As far as I can remember, the search/investigation method in this chapter isn't something they ever use on the series. It just seemed like a good way to allocate resources given the size of the search area.


	11. In Pursuit

"I didn't do nothing," the man slurred, "I was looking for my keys and I couldn't find them, so I was moving stuff around. I tripped over something, and I put my elbow through the window."

"And you just decided to fall asleep in the middle of the floor?" Hannah pressed.

"Guess I must've hit my head too. I got dizzy, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a holding cell."

"No," Olivia replied firmly. "We are so far past that it's not even funny. See, you didn't just pass out, you also puked all over the floor. The lab is running toxicology right now. We're going to find out what you took."

The man let out something between a sigh and a grunt. "Okay, fine. So I was high. Big deal. We good now?"

"No, we are not good now. You did a lot more than get high. Don't bother to deny it," she added as he opened his mouth. "We have a witness. We have that little girl's blood in your apartment, and your semen on her body. It's over for you, do you understand? You're going into a very dark hole for a very long time."

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, seeming to realize he wasn't going to be able to get out of this as easily as he'd expected. When he spoke again, his voice was shaky, devoid of the earlier cockiness. "I - I know things. I can tell you."

"What kinds of things?"

"I want a deal first. Get me a lawyer."

xxxxxxxxx

The ringing of his phone startled Zach out of a sound sleep, and he immediately grabbed it, answering it without even checking the display so that the ringer wouldn't wake Andrea. "Nichols."

" _Zach, honey, it's me._ "

"Mom." He carefully slid away from Andrea so he could talk without bothering her.

" _I'm sorry, were you asleep? You sound like I just woke you up._ "

"It's okay," he assured her. "What's up?"

" _I just wanted to see if you needed anything. Either of you. Not to say anything about you,_ " she added quickly. " _I know you're doing the best you possibly can. But I'm a child psychiatrist, and I have years of experience with families in your situation. I know well that normally easy tasks can become difficult when a child has been traumatized, especially for a single parent._ "

Zach glanced over at Andrea again. She was likely right, he conceded mentally; it would probably take time before the little girl would be comfortable leaving the house, and given that he was the only person she seemed fully comfortable with, that likely meant he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon either. They were okay on groceries, but, "I need a waterproof mattress pad for a double bed," he said finally. "Andrea wet her bed last night, and I doubt it'll be the last time, given what she's been through. I'll pay you back."

"Don't worry about it. I'll be over in two hours, okay? That will give you time to let Andrea know what's going on."

xxxxxxxxx

It was a not-so-guarded secret that, much as she loved her sons and grandsons, a part of Charlotte Nichols had always wished to add a girl to the family. And in her work, she'd met plenty of children whose first reaction to her was fear. But never in her wildest dreams had she expected that these two things might intersect.

When Zach had been a teenager, one of his classmates had run away from home and disappeared for two months. Charlotte remembered it clearly. Though her marriage had been on the rocks then, one thing she and Theodore had fully agreed on was that they were secretly relieved that it had been a stranger and not a member of their own family. They had both taken to their textbooks to assure themselves that these awful thoughts were normal. They had never expected such a thing to happen to their family. Only now, it had. And seeing Andrea with her head buried in Zach's shoulder, too afraid to even look at Charlotte, drove that point home.

"It's okay, baby," Zach was murmuring to her as he pulled the door open. "It's okay. This is my mom, and I love and trust her very much. I'd never let anyone near you if I thought there was a chance they would hurt you."

His eyes met his mother's, and the amount of pain in them made him want to cry. She'd seen it so many times before, in the eyes of parents whose children had been through unspeakable ordeals, but in those cases professionalism had allowed her to keep a necessary distance so she could focus. But this wasn't some client's family, this was her _son_. She wanted to pull him into her arms, to hold him close and comfort him, but as long as he was holding Andrea, that would only do more harm than good.

She bypassed her son altogether, speaking instead to the little girl. "Zach is right, Andrea. But if you don't want me here, I'll leave. I don't want to do anything to hurt you."

To both of their surprise, Andrea lifted her head, turning it slightly so she could see Charlotte out of the corner of her eye. "It's okay," she said finally. "You can stay."

xxxxxxxxx

"I don't understand why her reaction changed." Zach kept the words to a whisper so as not to disturb Andrea, who had fallen asleep again on the couch with her head in his lap. "I thought she _might_ say you could stay just because she's so afraid to upset anyone. But that was genuine."

"Partly, it's the fact that I was willing to give her the choice," Charlotte whispered back. "But she also trusts you. Scared though she is, she knows you're telling her the truth; you'd never let anyone into this house who would hurt her. Zach, don't underestimate yourself. The bond between the two of you is incredible. Some abuse victims have trouble trusting even biological parents, but Andrea trusts you without reservation."

"Not entirely." He ran his hand gently over her hair. "She still reacts sometimes like she's afraid I'm going to hurt her. She'd finally stopped doing that a few months before this all happened."

"She was doing this before? Was she abused at any time before you met her?"

He nodded sadly, caressing Andrea's hair again. "Why?"

"I'll explain in a minute, but I need to know one more thing. How old was Andrea when the abuse began?"

He shrugged, though grief seemed to weigh him down, making the motion much more labor-intensive than usual. "Nobody's entirely sure. Young enough that she can't remember a time before the abuse. First reprieve she ever got was when ACS got involved."

"That's what I thought," Charlotte said sadly. "That part's got nothing to do with you. It's all conditioning. Her formative memories taught her that pain was the consequence of a mistake. That's a difficult thing to overcome, and frankly, I'm astonished you got to a point where she wasn't reacting that way in just a few months the first time around. But even based on what little you told me, I'm sure those same lessons she learned in early childhood were reinforced by her captors. She trusts you, Zach, that much is obvious. But that's competing with her entire past."

"I don't understand," he whispered brokenly. "I look at her and - and all I want to do is hold her close and protect her from the world. How can a person see the same child and think something so different?"

"That's above my pay grade, Zach," she said gently. "Or your father's, for that matter, and as much as you try to understand criminal behavior, I'm going to guess yours as well. All you can do is try to help in any way you can."

"How? How do you go about just picking up the pieces, day after day for years? Doesn't it ever feel like it's not enough?"

"Of course. The same way I'm sure it does for you when you catch a murderer after someone is already dead."

He nodded, willingly conceding that that much was true. "In those cases, though, at least I can think that I'm saving potential future victims. It's what keeps me going in day after day."

"And what keeps me going is knowing I've made a difference in those children's lives." There was no reproach in her tone, only understanding. "I may never know what drives a person to abuse a child, but if I can help those children get their lives back, that can be enough." She glanced down at where her son's hand rested on Andrea's head. "If anyone can do that for her, Zach, it's you."

xxxxxxxxx

"So what did we get from the dirtbag?" Fin asked.

"He's agreed to give up everything he knows about the people who were supplying him with girls. Unfortunately," Olivia added, "he doesn't know where their base is, but his details might help us find it."

"What did you have to give him?" one of the Major Case detectives asked, grimacing.

"Nothing too lenient. Concurrent sentences on everything we have now, and no additional charges for anything we find in the investigation. He'll still do twenty-five to life for rape and go on the registry if he ever gets out. Still kinder than I'd like," she admitted, "but we need what he has, and I have a feeling there are a lot of people who will fight parole for him when the time comes."

"What about the guy who covered for our kidnapper?" Rollins chimed in.

"He'll plead to obstruction, do a year at Riker's and five years' probation. He's given us everything he has on Linda, and we're working on tracking her down. She could probably give us a lot more, if we can convince her to cooperate."

"From what Munch told us, that's a big 'if'," Amaro pointed out. "And that's even assuming we find her."

"I know," she said grimly. "So for now, we keep working with what we have. We'll continue the phone banks and patrols, but in the meantime, Captain Hannah and I will be working with Lieutenant Morales from TARU to see what we can do with the data we got from our perp."

xxxxxxxxx

"Number comes back to a burner cell," Morales reported.

"So no GPS?" Hannah sighed. "I know, it's never that easy. But just this once, I was hoping it would be."

"Hey, don't give up so easily. Liv?"

"Yeah?"

"How good of an actress are you?"

She smiled, catching on. "I think I can manage."

He waved her over to the phone beside his desk. "We're already set up to trace it. You know what you have to do."

"Keep them on the line."

"Exactly. You ready?"

"Good to go."

"Dialing now." He hurried through the button sequence and then handed the receiver to Olivia.

After a few moments, she waved to Morales just as she began to speak in a high-pitched, bubbly voice. "Hello, this is Mary from Card Services. I'm calling regarding some questionable purchases from your account?"

Hannah pressed a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter as Olivia recited a litany of jewelry and electronics purchases, never once dropping her 'Mary' voice. "Oh, dear, this is so terrible. It looks like someone might have cloned your card!" A pause. "Well, there's a variety of ways it could have happened."

"We got it," Morales whispered.

"Well, we'll get right on it. I'll remove those charges for you, and when you get your bill, if there's anything on it that you didn't buy, you just call us back and we'll take care of it. Have a great day and thank you for banking with us!" She hung up.

Hannah finally burst out laughing out loud. "That was brilliant! I can't believe he bought it."

Olivia smiled at the compliment, but she was already back in professional mode. "What do we have on the trace?" she asked Morales.

"I triangulated it to about a twenty square block area." He pointed to the screen. "Can't get any more specific, but that should narrow your search area down considerably."

"Put that up on the board in the main room for me, please? And send it out to all the patrol units."

"Already done. And I ran off a printed copy in case you need one for reference."

"Thank you, Reuben." She grabbed the paper off the printer on her way out the door, running back into the main room.

"All right, everyone, listen up!" She waved for their attention, at the same time. "We've triangulated a phone signal down to this area here." She tapped the screen which, as promised, was displaying their new search area. "We keep taking tips, but for those of you screening, we're primarily focused on anything in or near this area. Meanwhile, I want the four closest units to begin patrolling the area - keep it low-profile for now, we don't want to spook them. All of the other patrols should start converging on that area, but again, low-profile. Don't enter the area, find a place nearby to wait where you won't be noticed and wait for my order. And get ESU on standby, same orders. Once we're ready to move, we'll need to move fast."

"Copy that, Sergeant!" The call, in near-perfect unison, went up from most of the people in the room and over the radio.

Hannah could see that her eyes had gone wide as she set the radio down and headed back for her office, and he smiled gently at her. "It's kind of a rush, isn't it?"

"Yeah. And incredibly unexpected."

"I'm not surprised," he countered. "You were out there thinking and speaking like a leader. People respond to that."

"Yeah, well, congratulate me when we crack this case," she replied. "Until then, the words are meaningless."

xxxxxxxxx

"Got it!" Olivia all but ripped the faxed search warrant off the printer. "We're good to go, let's move!"

Olivia ran for the elevator, closely followed by Captain Hannah and about a dozen officers pulled from the phone bank. "I'll drive," the Captain offered once they were in the parking lot. "You stay in contact with the scene."

"Right." She threw herself down in the passenger's seat, clicking her radio on almost before she had the door closed. "Fin, what's your status?"

" _Everything's still quiet. We're watching the house, but nothing so far. The frosted windows aren't helping much. Hope you've got a plan, or we're going to be going in more or less blind._ "

"ESU's got an infrared camera," she told him.

" _So sit tight?_ "

"Actually," she amended after a moment, "see if you can discreetly evacuate the houses that border it, okay? Just in case things get out of hand and spill over."

" _Copy that. Fin out._ "

"ESU, we need one camouflaged truck in front of the target house with an infrared camera. Other units, come to two blocks behind the house and hold for my signal. We need to evacuate the neighbors first."

" _Understood._ "

"Central, what's the status of the other officers in the area?"

" _You have eleven units parked just outside the perimeter, another seven who will be able to reach the scene within ten minutes._ "

"Thank you." She finally set the radio down in her lap, and it was only then that she realized the hand holding it was shaking ever so slightly.

"That's normal too."

She jumped, startled by his voice. "What?"

"This your first big case in the driver's seat - so to speak?" he added, seeming to realize how odd that statement sounded in context.

"Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I've run cases, but nothing on this level. I still don't know why they wanted me in charge; I expected to be taken off once I asked for the task force."

"Brass doesn't like to switch out the lead officer if they don't have to," he pointed out. "And it's pretty clear that in this case, they didn't have to. You may be new to command, but you're handling this like a pro. Besides," he added, seeming to sense that the amount of praise was making his colleague uncomfortable, "you have more experience with this kind of case than a lot of more seasoned officers do. 1PP probably wanted someone running things who wouldn't get sick at the situation."

"No, I'll just wait until I'm home," she said with a grimace. "It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, kid cases still get under your skin. My old partner used to say that when you get used to the really rough cases, it's time to transfer out." She absentmindedly rubbed a finger over her wedding ring as she thought of Elliot. "You never want to stop caring. You just want to be able to do what you have to do without falling apart."

"We're here," Hannah said after a moment, pulling up behind a very convincing delivery truck. After a quick visual scan, they both climbed out of the car and hurried to the truck, the back hatch opening on cue to let them inside.

"Nick," Olivia said as soon as the hatch was closed, her attention drawn immediately to her former partner, "status?"

"Fin and Rollins are finishing up the evacuation. We're sending all the evacuated families to the local precinct; the desk and the CO already have a heads-up to expect them."

"And we've just about got the infrared up and running," a tech reported from where he was kneeling by the piece of equipment in question. "We'd be there already if whoever did maintenance on this last hadn't plugged two of the cables in backwards. Okay, image in five, four, three, two..."

"Got it," the tech standing behind him said triumphantly.

"Got what?" Fin and Rollins had climbed in just in time to hear that last. "Oh, and evacuation is complete."

"The infrared, and nice work. Get suited up, we're close to a go." She turned back to the techs. "What do we have?"

"Okay, here's the basement you told us to look out for," the senior tech said, tapping a section of the screen. "We've got thirteen heat signatures down there. By the size, they all appear to be children."

"Good," Olivia said softly, "so we've got all the girls accounted for. What about the adults?"

"I'm getting there. We have seven adult-size heat signatures throughout the rest of the house."

"All right." She cued up her radio. "All units, this is Sergeant Benson. We're a go. Repeat, we're a go. All units report to my position."

xxxxxxxxx

"Is everyone clear on the plan and their positions?" A series of confirmations answered Olivia's question. "Okay, let's move. Everyone move into entry positions on my go. Three, two -"

She was abruptly cut off by a series of screams coming through her headset, almost deafening. "What the hell?"

"Liv!" That was Nick, shouting to be heard over the cacophony. "You'd better get out here, right now."

She jumped out of the truck without further thought, making a beeline for the younger detective. But what she saw stopped her in her tracks. "My God," she whispered, too shocked and horrified to even scream. There was no longer any need to ask what had happened.

The house they'd been so carefully monitoring for the past hour and a half was on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep...cliffhanger. I know, I'm evil. But I won't leave you hanging all that long.


	12. Coming Under Fire

**Chapter 12: Coming Under Fire  
**

"They can't stay in the house," Olivia whispered. It was her first coherent thought.

" _Say again, Sergeant?_ "

She hadn't even realized she'd spoken out loud until she heard the voice through her headset. "I said the suspects can't stay in the house, not while it's on fire. At some point they'll have to exit. We need to be ready to nab them when they do. Get the perimeter as close as you safely can. Did anyone call the Fire Department?"

" _We did_ ," someone replied. " _They're en route. ETA in five._ "

"Serena!" Captain Hannah's voice rang out over the chaos, and Olivia turned just in time to see the tall detective running towards the burning house. "Detective! Stop!"

"The girls!" Stevens shouted back, not breaking stride. "They'll die in there!"

Olivia felt something brush past her and then realized it was Nick, sprinting after his temporary partner. She'd known him far too long to believe, even for a second, that he intended to stop the senior detective. Her own shouts were nearly drowned out by the general chaos.

"Sergeant!" That was Rollins, who was running towards her, closely followed by Fin. "We have to do something! Fire won't get here in time!"

 _Well, at least_ somebody _consults with me first._ But she knew that the young detective was right, that Nick and Serena, while reckless, had had a reason not to wait. A large amount of the smoke was coming from the bottom of the structure, indicating that the basement, where the girls were held, was on fire.

"Okay," she said finally. "But let's be careful. Take all precautions, and _no_ unnecessary risks. We get the girls if we can, and we get out. And keep your eyes open in case some of the suspects are still in the house."

xxxxxxxxx

The concrete walls of the basement glowed orange, reflecting the flames, and both Nick and Serena coughed on the thick smoke. But neither one of them thought, even for a moment, of turning back.

"There's a padlock on this door here!" she yelled. "I think this is it!"

She drew her weapon, swinging the butt of it at the lock. A few good strikes and the metal pulled away from the wooden door. Heedless of the heat radiating from it, she grabbed hold of the lock and yanked it loose, letting it fall to the floor just as Nick ran up beside her.

The room itself was awash with flame. A group of girls was huddled in the one small area that had so far been spared, but it was clear that it was only a matter of time before that too was ablaze. Already, they could see that one girl's hair was on fire and several more appeared to be at immediate risk.

"I'm going in!" Serena shouted over the roar of the flames. "Nick, stay on this side! I'll hand them over the flames to you!"

"Got it!" he called back. "I'll be right here!"

Serena's legs were just long enough to clear the wall of fire, though one of the cuffs on her pants caught a spark which she had to slap out before it could spread. She immediately ran towards the girl whose hair was burning, already ripping her jacket off and using it to smother the flames. "Okay, honey, you first." She scooped the girl up in her arms, handing her over the wall of flame to Amaro.

"Go that way!" she heard him yell. "Run that way! Up the stairs and out the door!"

"Nick, got another one!" she called out, picking up the nearest girl and handing her off to safety. Just in the time it had taken to rescue the first two, the fire had already consumed even more ground.

"We're not going to have time!" he yelled, panicked, even as he took a third girl from Serena and sent her up to safety.

"We have to!" she yelled back as she tossed another girl into Nick's arms. "I'm not leaving them behind!"

All of a sudden, Serena was hit by a force so powerful it almost knocked her down. She heard Nick yell out in surprise as well. _My God, what now?_

Then she heard Nick shout again, this time with something that almost sounded like a laugh. In the next moment, she realized what was going on. Painful though the initial contact was, it wasn't another obstacle, it was salvation. _There's water coming from the ceiling._

The water wasn't enough to extinguish the raging fire, but it hampered the spread, and Serena knew the drenching would provide herself, Nick, and the girls some level of protection from the flames. She reached down, handing off another girl, and another, until only three remained on her side. But they lay motionless, visibly injured and Serena knew they wouldn't be able to run as the others had.

"Nick, we've got three here who are hurt!" she yelled. "How do you want to do this?"

"Hand two to me!" he shouted back after a moment. "I'll carry them out, and you take the last one. You have to get back over this wall of fire," he reminded her when it seemed like she might argue. "You'll need more mobility."

"Right." She couldn't help a flash of embarrassment at thinking that Nick had been coddling her, but she pushed it aside, there was no time for that. "Okay, here we go."

Nick carefully laid the two girls over his shoulders, wrapping one arm around each as he ran for the stairs. Serena picked up the final girl and stepped over the flames, sighing a breath of relief that turned into a cough when she was finally in a place where the fire wasn't between her and safety.

The sight of turnout gear was the first thing that met Serena at the front door. Her mind hazy from the heat and lack of oxygen, it took her a moment to realize that the two suits actually had people inside. One took the girl from her arms while the other immediately pushed her to the ground and threw something over her legs. Serena just stared for a moment, uncomprehendingly, before realizing that there was smoke rising from them. She hadn't even realized there was anything wrong.

Hands lifted her up and placed her on a stretcher. She was coughing in earnest now, gasping to get fresh air into her lungs between spasms, and a paramedic pressed a mask over her face. It was an odd sensation, but the extra oxygen felt good and was helping her mind to clear.

Turning her head to her side, she could see Nick sitting on the tailgate of an ambulance, also making use of an oxygen mask while Detective Rollins stood close by. As they approached, she could hear the blonde detective's voice, clear even over all the chaos, "...could have gotten yourself killed, do you realize that?"

"I had no choice. The girls -" he began coughing again.

"Don't talk." Rollins pushed the mask back onto his face. "Don't talk, just breathe."

"She's right, though." That was Benson, stepping up from behind one of the ambulances. "That goes for both of you," she added, looking from Nick to Serena. "Emergency situation or no, that was incredibly reckless."

The two detectives exchanged a glance. "We know," Nick said finally, his voice muffled by the mask.

"You both owe Rollins big-time," she added, giving the blonde detective a smile. "I think I'm going to use her as an example of why actually reading paperwork can save lives."

"What?" Serena asked, sitting up slowly on the stretcher. "What happened?"

"It was really Andrea who saved you," Rollins objected, blushing a bit. "She mentioned in her interview that the girls were periodically sprayed with 'water from the ceiling'."

"You turned on the water," Serena realized.

The blonde nodded. "If you two were going to insist on doing something reckless, the least I could do was keep you from getting killed in the process."

"All right." One of the EMTs interrupted before the conversation could proceed. "We need to get these two to a hospital."

"I'll ride along," Rollins volunteered quickly, her hand still on Nick's back.

"All right, just stay out of the way. Let's go! Load up!"

xxxxxxxxx

"Serena did _what_?" Zach asked incredulously, almost unable to believe what he was hearing over the phone.

" _That was my reaction too,_ " Captain Hannah admitted. " _I tried to stop her but she was halfway to the house before I even realized what was happening._ "

He shook his head, even though he knew the other man couldn't see it. "I doubt you would have been able to stop her. She's stubborn when she wants to be."

" _As opposed to you?_ " The Captain barked out a laugh.

"Fair enough," Zach said evenly. "How's she doing?"

" _Second-degree burns on both legs and some smoke inhalation. She'll probably have to spend a night or two in the hospital, but there's no serious damage. She's fully conscious and already giving me a hard time about when she'll be able to come back to work._ "

He laughed. "Tell her...tell her I'm thinking about her, okay? I can't leave here right now, but I'm thinking about her. And I can't believe she'd pull a stunt like that."

" _Will do._ "

"Zach?" Andrea asked from his lap as he hung up the phone. "Is Serena okay?"

"Yes, she's okay," he replied immediately. "She got hurt a little bit at work, but she's going to be just fine."

She regarded him, a curious expression crossing her features. "Why don't you go to work anymore?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought that if Serena goes to work you go to work too. You said that's how partners are. But she went to work today and you didn't."

He smiled down at her. "You are one smart little girl, you know that?" He was gratified to see a small answering smile from her. "Yes, you're right, Serena and I usually go to work at the same time. But sometimes one of us has to stay home - like kids staying home from school on days where everyone else is going because they're sick."

"But...you're not sick, are you?" Concern filled her voice.

"No, baby," he reassured her. "I'm not sick. Sometimes, grown-ups stay home from work to take care of their kids." He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close to his chest. "And there is nowhere in the world I'd rather be than right here."

"Zach?" she asked after a minute. "Can I...can I ask you something?"

"Of course you can, baby. Anything."

"It's just...you always treat me like your real kid. So, um...would it be okay if...canIcallyouDad?"

Despite the speed with which the words tumbled out, Zach understood them perfectly. He could feel tears springing to his eyes, and he had to swallow several times before he could speak. "You _are_ my real child," he said after a moment, his voice thick and choked. "It doesn't matter who gave birth to you, you've been mine since the day I found out you'd be moving in with me. And I can't think of anything I would like better than if you started calling me Dad."

"I love you...Dad," she whispered, trying the word out for the first time.

And Zach had never heard anything that sounded more right. His cheeks were wet with tears as he replied, "I love you too, my Andrea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know that Serena and Nick were super reckless in this chapter, but I can see it for Amaro, and Stevens is kind of a blank slate so I can kind of mold her character into what I want/need her to be...that's probably part of why I like working with the character. I'm sure those two will hear no end of it from their respective partners.
> 
> The little scene between Zach and Andrea is something I've had in mind for awhile, but couldn't figure out exactly where in the narrative to put it. When I started writing out the bit with Zach talking about parents staying home for their kids, it just seemed to fit.
> 
> Yes, the chapter title is a bit of a pun...intended for one reader in particular! You know who you are, especially considering you use the word "Punster" as part of your pen-name.


	13. Scattered Pieces Coming Together

"What's the status at the house?" Olivia asked as she walked into the squad room.

"Fire's out, but FDNY's still clearing the scene," Fin reported. "They say another hour, maybe two, before they can be sure it's safe for us to go in and look for evidence. Good news is that while the basement was pretty much incinerated, they kept it pretty well-contained and a lot of stuff survived on the first and second floor. Might have some water damage from the hoses but at least it still exists. What's the news from the hospital?"

"Nick and Serena were incredibly lucky," she said grimly. "They've both been admitted for smoke inhalation and moderate burns, but they'll be fine. A lot of the victims, though, they're in a lot worse shape."

Captain Hannah grimaced. "How bad?"

"Two are still extremely questionable," she said softly. "A third in serious condition, expected to survive but she'll have a long and painful recovery ahead of her. Several more are permanently disfigured, one is likely to lose one of her feet. Not one of them escaped unscathed physically, to say nothing of what they went through before today."

"At least we got all seven of the guys," Fin commented. "I have no idea how they thought they were going to get out through our perimeter."

"Got?" Only then did Olivia realize she hadn't heard the full report from the scene. "You mean arrested, or..."

"Six arrested," Hannah replied. "One tried to shoot his way through the perimeter. SWAT took him down before he could get off more than a couple shots." He pinched his lips slightly. "I'm honestly not sure if he actually thought he could shoot his way out or if he intended for things to happen exactly the way they did."

Fin frowned. "Suicide by cop, you mean?"

"That type isn't going to fare well in prison," the Captain remarked. "He might've thought death was preferable."

"Whoa." A new voice joined those that had been speaking. "What the hell happened here?"

"Lieutenant!" Olivia turned, startled, to face her supervisor. "I thought you weren't due back until tomorrow morning."

As Murphy's face pulled into a puzzled frown, Rollins spoke up behind her. "Liv, it's six a.m. already. It _is_ tomorrow morning."

"It's what?" Her head snapped back around to look at the blonde.

"It's six o'clock in the morning on the exact day I said I'd be back," Murphy said, his voice a mixture of amusement and exasperation."You've been up all night?"

"And then some," she admitted.

"I can see why." Again, he glanced around the bullpen. "It looks like in the less than a week I've been gone, this went from an ordinary squad room to police central headquarters."

"Well, it's not quite _that_ simple," she objected. "We caught a big one, so I called everyone in."

"So I see," he said with a raised eyebrow. "You want to come fill me in, or are you going to make me guess?"

"I'll fill you in," she said, blushing a bit. "Rollins, have the fire department keep you posted and let me know as soon as they say it's safe for us to go in."

"Copy that, Sergeant," she replied immediately.

"So," Murphy asked, sitting down behind his desk, "what exactly _did_ happen while I was gone?"

"Well, Lieutenant." She sat down across from him. "That first night after you left, we got a call..."

xxxxxxxxx

Serena woke suddenly in a fit of coughing, sitting up abruptly in a desperate attempt to get her breath. It was only when she was finally able to draw air into her lungs that she realized she wasn't alone. A pair of hands was gently supporting her.

"Charlotte?" she gasped out when she was finally able to speak. "What are you doing here?"

"Making sure you're okay." She held a cup out to Serena. "That cough sounds nasty."

"I've had worse." She laid back against the pillows, taking a mouthful of the cool liquid. "Zach asked you to look in on me?"

"It was my idea. Though he is worried about you," she added. "He mentioned you'd been hurt. He said he wanted to come see you himself, but he can't leave Andrea and she's still too afraid to leave the house. When he mentioned you didn't have family in the area, I told him I'd come pay you a visit."

"It's no big deal, really. I'll be back to work in a week. But I appreciate the gesture." A fond smile crossed her face. "Zach's one hell of a father, isn't he?"

She nodded, smiling. "If I had a single doubt that he was on the right path, it was gone the first time I saw him with that little girl. But tell me, Serena, how did you get hurt? I know enough about standard line of duty injuries to know this wasn't one."

"Standard, no. Line of duty, yes." She coughed again, once, and was relieved when it wasn't more than that. "I ran into a burning house to save some kids."

The older woman shook her head. "I'm not even going to ask. But you're going to be okay?"

"Yeah. Like I said, back to work in a week. You really didn't have to come."

"No one should be left alone in the hospital, regardless of how serious it is. Besides," she added with a smile, "hopefully, this will stop my son from worrying so much,"

"Well," Serena replied, smiling too, "there is that."

xxxxxxxxx

There had been a few times during his childhood when Zach had managed to play the piano passably with one hand. The first time had been because of a broken wrist he'd gotten when he'd fallen climbing a tree, and every time after that had been just because he could. It had really been a form of showing off; some kids did wheelies on their bicycle, he could play the piano with one hand. It had never seemed nearly as important as it did in this moment, as he sat on the bench with his right hand coaxing a tune from the piano as his left ran through Andrea's hair, holding her close to his side. _I never want to be without her again._

He felt her head starting to droop and let the piano fall silent. "Tired, baby?"

"Uh-huh," she mumbled.

"Come on, then." He turned, gathering her up in his arms. "Let's get you to bed."

Andrea tensed a bit, passively resisting his attempt to pick her up. "It's - it's okay. I can walk."

"Your feet are cut," he said gently. "It'll hurt if you walk."

"It doesn't hurt that much."

Zach saw the way she involuntarily glanced to her left; a clear tell that she was lying. "Andrea, what's wrong, sweetheart?"

"I'm sorry," she whimpered.

"Oh, baby, you don't have anything to be sorry for."

She nodded, a little stubbornly. "I'm sorry that I'm nine but you have to take care of me like I was a baby. I'm sorry it can't be like it was. I'm sorry I'm so scared of everything." She was crying now, silent tears slipping down her face. "I'm sorry I'm not normal anymore."

Zach pulled the sobbing girl into his lap, cradling her head tightly against his chest. "Oh, my Andrea -" He broke off, too choked up himself to speak for a moment. "Let me tell you something," he said finally. "It doesn't bother me a bit to carry you around. In fact, sometimes I wish I could carry you around all day and never put you down. Do you want to know why?"

"Yes." There was a note of hope, even wonder, in her voice.

"Because I'm scared too," he admitted. "I'm scared that I'm going to wake up and you'll be gone again. When I have you here, in my arms, then I know you're safe with me. I missed you so, so much. I never want to feel that way again." He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. "I wish things could be like they were before too, because it makes me sad that so many bad things happened to you. I wish I could have protected you. But Andrea, this isn't forever, okay? It's like - it's like these." He carefully took one of her bandaged hands in his. "I know you know that your hands won't stay cut forever. A little bit at a time, the cuts heal, and maybe you'll have a few scars, but most of the time you won't even think about it. It'll be the same way with the hurt inside you. It's not always going to be this bad."

"But...it hurts a lot more inside than my hands do." Andrea buried her head deeper into his chest.

He tightened his grip on her, tears now flowing freely down his own face. "I know it does, baby girl. I know it does. It's probably going to take longer to heal than your hands and feet will. And you might need to see a special doctor to help you with that. But it's going to get better. And in the meantime, I'm here to take care of you as much as you need, and there's nothing in the world I'd rather be doing."

"Really?"

"I promise." He kissed her head again. "Now, are you ready to go to bed?"

"Can I - can I stay with you? Just for one more night?"

"Of course." He stood, lifting her into his arms; she didn't resist this time. "For as many nights as you want."

xxxxxxxxx

"What's all that?" Olivia asked as Fin and Rollins stepped out of the elevator, trying to navigate a dolly that was piled high with boxes.

"Evidence from the house," the senior detective replied, leaping sideways to prevent catastrophe as the top box threatened to topple off the tower. "I think we're gonna need an incident room."

"We can take Conference Room One," she offered. "All this is from the house?"

"That's not even all of it," Rollins said wryly. "Lab took the physical evidence, and TARU's got the laptops and cameras. This is just the photos and videos."

"What?" The Sergeant came to a dead stop, staring at the pile. "All this is..."

"Yep," Fin confirmed. "Liv, from the dates on some of those videos, these people have been at this for over a decade. There's got to be thousands of hours of video, and I don't want to try and guess how many photographs. We thought we should run them against open cases. Missing persons, child porn, you know the drill."

"Good. But don't expect much from the missing persons angle," Olivia added. "Missing persons is coming up empty on the girls from the house. It's looking more and more like Andrea may have been the only girl in that basement who was actually reported missing."

"That might be intentional."

Three heads turned to look at the newcomer. Olivia sighed out loud. "Bobby, I'm sorry. I forgot you were coming in today. We're kind of swamped on another case right now, I don't know if we can spare any time."

"I know. Captain Hannah is an old friend of mine, I ran into him in the lobby and he told me what you caught. Figured as long as I was here, I might be able to help. On me," he added. "I can afford to take a case pro bono, as it were, every so often, and this case...if there was ever a case I wanted to take just on principle, this would be it."

"Okay." For the first time since the case had broken, Olivia had a real, if exhausted, smile on her face. "What were saying about things being intentional?"

"Specifically, their choice of victims. I heard Fin say they've been at it for years?" Several nods followed that statement. "They've figured out ways to get their hands on children that no one will miss or look for. It reduces the chances that they'll be caught. Even if someone sees one of the kids, there's no missing child poster for them to recognize a face from."

Olivia was nodding slowly. "Street kids, black market adoptions, buying kids from junkies and other parents selfish or desperate enough to sell their own kids...I can see it."

"But not Andrea," Rollins pointed out. "She was grabbed off a playground, reported missing right away."

"Now _that's_ strange." Bobby's brow furrowed. "They've kept their operation profitable for years without raising a single alarm. Why would they suddenly take such a jump in risk?"

"Because they didn't know they did," Olivia said after a moment. " _They_ didn't kidnap Andrea, that was Linda. As far as the ring knew, they were just buying one more girl from a parent who valued cash over their kid's life; they had no idea that someone might actually be looking for her. And based on what I got from Munch, Linda wouldn't give a second thought about the risk to anyone but herself. She knew she had an alibi, the rest of the world could burn for all she cared."

"Okay, now it's starting to make sense," Bobby said after a moment. "Although, this Linda, what she did...does that have anything to do with the reason they were caught?"

"I guess that depends how you look at it," Olivia said thoughtfully. "The missing persons report didn't get us anywhere near them, but it _was_ Andrea who put us onto the ring in the first place, and her information did indirectly lead us to the location."

"Yeah, and I think that's significant."

Fin turned his attention to his partner, considering her words. "How do you mean?"

"It's something Nick said when I was with him in the ambulance - in one of the few moments he wasn't coughing his lungs out. He mentioned that the girls seemed almost as scared of him and Serena as they were of the fire. They've either been taught to be afraid of the police or strangers in general."

"But not Andrea." Olivia was catching on now. "She was generally afraid, like a lot of victims, but not on that level. After being around the other victims...she's just _different_. Even after everything she's been through, she still has that spark - the same spark that gave her the strength to escape when she had the chance. If it had been any other girl in the apartment when that guy passed out, I'm not sure we'd even know this ring existed."

"Which means they could easily hold both Andrea and Linda responsible for everything falling apart," Bobby said grimly. "If you don't have some kind of protection on them already, you probably should."

"Andrea's protected." Olivia's reply was immediate; she knew that Zach would die before he'd let anything else happen to the little girl, and he had the skills to protect her. "We haven't been able to find Linda yet. Woman's a drifter and a scam artist, her last known is no good. Believe me, we've been trying. We want her as badly as anyone does."

"Do you have a file on her? Maybe I can help."

"Right...here." She spotted the file and pulled it from her desk, handing it to Bobby. "Knock yourself out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, winding down a bit now. I don't, and never did, intend to solve Andrea's problems in this story. Those kinds of things can take years. I just wanted to get to a point where she's more or less comfortable with Zach, since I'll be skipping a bit of time between this and the sequel.
> 
> I hadn't initially intended to bring Bobby and the Eyes Wide Open storyline into this story at all, but it seemed too unrealistically convenient to me that he would just not be there for days on end while he was working on an active case, and yet be there every time something major happens on said active case. It also gave me a good way to give the team a boost in putting a few pieces together. For reference's sake, Andrea is kidnapped earlier in the timeline than the start of Eyes Wide Open and this part of the story (from Andrea being found onwards) takes place in the between chapters 4 and 5 of Eyes Wide Open (there's a 2 1/2 month timeline gap there). Chapter 6 of this story is roughly parallel to the earlier chapters of Eyes Wide Open.


	14. Undercover and Peeking Out

Rollins noticed the Hispanic detective as he approached the desk, even as it became clear that he was trying not to be seen. For his part, he seemed to notice her eyes on him, winked, and put a finger to his lips before pointing at Fin. She nodded, smiling, as he approached her partner from behind.

"Getting soft in your old age, Tutuola?"

The detective jumped a mile, spinning around at the familiar but unexpected voice as Rollins dissolved in laughter. "Damn, Sandoval. Haven't you learned not to sneak up on a cop yet?"

"Sorry," he said insincerely, laughing too. "Couldn't resist." He looked back at the blonde, who was almost doubled over her desk. "Well, you've certainly upgraded from Munch."

Fin laughed now too. "Detective Mike Sandoval, Detective Amanda Rollins. Munch dumped us all for the DA's office. But what brings you here? Somehow, I have a hard time believing you dropped in for a chat after nine years."

"Yeah, no," he replied with a smile. "I'm here for professional reasons. Your lieutenant borrowed me for this task force, they said you needed a UC."

"We do." That was Olivia, who had entered the room during Sandoval's explanation. "But I didn't realize they were sending you," she added with a warm handshake. "I hear you're a big hotshot over at Organized Crime now; I'm surprised you even found time for us."

He shrugged. "I owe Declan Murphy a favor. Just tell me I'm not going to get blown up or shot this time, please." He winked at Rollins again when she gave him a confused look. "I have the worst luck with these guys."

Olivia laughed lightly, shaking her head. "Good news is, as undercover assignments go, this one's relatively low-risk."

"And the bad news?" he asked skeptically.

"Bad news is, you'll be playing a bit of a long game, and we don't know exactly how long. Good news on that front, though, is that it's not exactly going to be strenuous."

"So the bad news is that I get to spend at least a few days, exact time indeterminate, on a cushy assignment?" he translated. "I think I can live with that. What's the assignment and what's my story?"

"You're a stockbroker," Olivia told him. " You're married, happily for the most part but you suffer from a bit of a roving eye. In addition, things at work haven't been going so well for you."

"Sounds like a recipe for trouble," he commented wryly.

"It should," Olivia confirmed. "That's what we want the target to think."

She bent over the projector for a moment, bringing up an image on the screen. "This is Linda Marquez. We need to bring her in as soon as possible. We have enough to arrest; trouble is, we can't find her."

"So how does my undercover play into this?"

"I'm getting there. Starting tonight, there's a new piece to your alter ego's daily routine. You stop by a bar to drown your sorrows, and catch a little eye candy while you're there. You never do anything, but people in the bar should be aware that you're eying these girls up. See, our target is a major blackmailer. Her usual MO is to seduce a wealthy man and then force him to pay for her silence."

"Wait." For the first time since entering, Sandoval looked just the slightest bit unsettled. "Just how far am I supposed to -"

"Not nearly that far," Olivia rushed to assure him. "Like I said, we already have enough to arrest, so we don't actually have to take this to the point where she commits a crime. The point of this operation is to bring her to us instead of us having to hunt for her. As soon as she shows up to take the bait, we take her. In the meantime," she added with a smile, "you basically live your alter ego's life. We don't know if she watches potential victims first, so you need to play the part convincingly. We'll work something out to get you from your supposed office to your precinct and back, but you'll live in a cover house, go out to eat at the kinds of places he would frequent, the whole works."

"Sounds like fun." Mike's confident smile was back. "When do we get started?"

xxxxxxxxx

"They're going to want her to testify, aren't they?"

The momentary relief Zach had felt at hearing that Andrea's captors had been taken into custody had quickly faded when he'd realized what the next steps were likely to entail.

Olivia gave a sigh that resonated through the phone. " _I'm afraid that's likely, yes."_

He looked over to where Andrea lay asleep beside him. "I – I know she's capable," he whispered, trying not to do anything that might disturb her. "She was a rock-solid witness in that case last year. But this...making her relive it..."

" _I know_ ," Olivia replied softly. " _But...I don't know if this is going to help or not, but in my experience, children who testify against their attackers are often glad they did in the long term. They feel like they had a chance to fight back._ "

He looked at Andrea again, laying a protective hand gently on her head. "I can believe that," he said after a moment. "In the long term, I can believe that. It's putting her in a room – even a secure courtroom – with those monsters that bothers me. Just seeing them is going to hurt her, and no amount of prep is going to change that."

" _I know, I do_ ," she said with such certainty that Zach knew in that moment that she _did_ know, truly, what he was fighting. " _And I know there's nothing I can say to change that._ "

"Lieutenant," he asked suddenly, "if you were in my position, what would you do? Would you ask her to do this?"

Silence filled the line for a long moment as Olivia considered his question. _"No,"_ she said finally, " _but I wouldn't shield her from it either. I know it's hard to think this way with a child so young, but she's the one directly affected by this, and as such...I would give her the facts and let her make the choice._ "

"Let her choose," he repeated. Even as the words left his mouth, he knew she was right. Andrea was a smart little girl, and it had always been his policy to let her make decisions that affected her life when possible. "Of course. Thank you, Lieutenant."

xxxxxxxxx

"Heads up," Fin whispered into his wrist mike, pretending to take a drink to cover the motion. "Target just entered the room."

" _Copy that."_ Olivia's voice came through the earpiece.

At the same time, Mike turned to Fin, nodding once. Fin replied with a subtle nod of his own. "Sandoval's got a visual. She's approaching him."

" _You know the drill."_

"Circle around from behind," he confirmed. "Copy that."

He set his glass down as though he was going to leave and headed for the door, making sure he was outside her range of vision before he doubled back to approach her, making momentary eye contact with Sandoval. "Linda Marquez?"

The woman turned, her irritation at being interrupted visible. "Excuse me, can't you see I'm in the middle of something?" She gave him a distasteful glance. "Do I even know you?"

"Maybe this rings a bell." He turned his hand around so that she could see the badge clasped in it. "Linda Marquez, you're under arrest -"

"What? No! This is a mistake." She turned back to Mike, an almost desperate look on her face. "Tell him -" But her voice broke off abruptly when she saw that he too was now holding a badge.

Fin grinned at Sandoval over Linda's head. "Actually, I think my friend here has something to tell _you_."

Sandoval smiled back. "You have the right to remain silent," he said as Fin pulled her hands behind her back and locked the cuffs around her wrists. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you..."

xxxxxxxxx

"Andrea," Zach said softly, sitting down beside his young daughter, "I have something to tell you."

She looked up, her eyes meeting his, reading the expression on his face. "What's wrong?"

Despite the heavy weight he felt hanging on him, he barely suppressed a smile. _Yep, that's my girl all right._ "Andrea, the police found your mother. And, I'm not sure how you're going to feel about this...she's been arrested."

A dozen emotions crossed her face in the span of a second. "Is she...is she going to jail?"

"Probably."

"Because of me?"

"Because of what _she_ did," he corrected her. "She broke the law. You were the person she hurt when she did, but that doesn't make it your fault. She make a choice."

"I know," she replied. "I just..."

"Just what, honey?" he prompted after several moments' silence.

"She went to jail before because she hurt me," Andrea blurted out all at once.

"You mean, when you were little?"

Andrea nodded. "When she took me...she was so angry. She talked about all the things she said I had to pay her back for and going to jail was one she kept saying over and over." She dropped her head, letting her long hair fall over her face. "I didn't even say anything that time. But this time I did. I told the detective that she was the one who took me." She reached one small hand out, gripping his long fingers tightly. "She'll be even more angry at me now."

"And you're afraid of what she might do," he realized.

Another nod, and then a shiver went through her small body. "She knows how to find me. She already did once."

"Oh, Andrea..." After a moment's silence, struggling to find the right words, he opened his arms to her. "Come here, baby."

She threw herself into his lap, letting go of his hand to wrap both arms around his waist. He hugged her close. "Andrea," he began softly, "your mother should have gone to jail for a long time for hurting you the first time. That she didn't isn't fair to anyone, especially not you. But I don't think that's going to happen this time. She's looking at being locked up for a very long time, if not the rest of her life."

A spark of hope flickered in her dark eyes as she finally looked up. "Really?"

"That's what the prosecutor told me."

"Prosecutor..." the word seemed to register in her mind, triggering a thought. "Does that mean she's going to have a trial too?"

"Probably," he replied, hearing the subtext as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. _Do I have to see her in court?_ "You remember what we talked about, right? In every case, it's your choice whether or not to go to court."

"But..." she replied a little hesitantly, "you said that there was lots of evidence against the men even without me."

"Yes, I did, and there is."

"But not her."

 _Of course._ Andrea's point suddenly became clear to him. _The downside of a child her age having that level of reasoning skills._ "There is some other evidence. Not as much as against the men, but there is some."

"If I go to court, will she definitely go to jail for a long time?"

"Well, there's no one hundred percent guarantee, but it is very likely, yes."

"I'll do it."

"Andrea...are you sure?"

She nodded with a determination he remembered from the first day he'd met her, a determination that he hadn't seen since before that horrible day in December when everything had changed. "I'm sure."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, everyone! It took me awhile to decide where exactly I was going with this.
> 
> Mike Sandoval is a guest character who appears in two episodes of SVU. I know it's a little weird having two characters in this story with the same name, but he was the best option I could think of. And he does, in fact, have an injury record with his guest appearances on SVU (not unlike Elliot Stabler every time Dana Lewis comes to town); in his first episode, Haunted, he's just outside a house that blows up, and in his other appearance, Ghost, he's shot in the arm protecting a witness.


	15. It'll Be Okay

"Benson. Oh, hello, Doctor. How are -" She broke off abruptly, her face visibly falling as she listened to the voice on the other end. "I understand," she said more softly. "Thank you for calling me."

"Liv?" Nick asked as she set the phone back down with a shaking hand. "What's wrong?"

The brunette woman put her face in her hands, taking several deep breaths before she spoke, and even then she sounded on the verge of tears. "That was the hospital. Suzie Doe just died."

A sudden silence fell over the squad room as the four detectives digested the news. Two of the girls that had been pulled from the burning basement had died within a day of the rescue, which had been a bitter pill to swallow already, though an expected one. But the third serious injury case - a girl who had been awake long enough to tell her doctor that her name was Suzie, but like many of the others didn't know her last name - had been in critical care, her odds of survival going up and down and back up again almost every day, for the three weeks since.

Amaro bent his head down, pressing his forehead to his hands where they lay clasped on the desk. They had all been watching the little girl's progress, hoping desperately for a positive outcome, but no one more than Amaro, who had carried her to safety from the inferno in the basement prison. Rollins got up slowly from her desk and walked around behind him, laying a hand on his back.

"Nick," the Sergeant said after a few moments. "If you need to take the day..."

"No." He slowly picked his head up off the table, running a hand across his eyes. "I'll, um, I'll call Victim Services, see about arranging the funeral."

"Okay." Olivia nodded, understanding that the simple task would do more for Nick than forcing him to take time off. "I'll drive down to the DA's office, touch base with Barba."

xxxxxxxxx

"A couple of the guys we picked up off the videos are cutting deals," Barba reported, "but the six from the house won't budge. They're either scared or overconfident."

"Or both," Olivia offered.

"Or both," he agreed.

"How'd it go with the motion to sever this morning?"

"Oh, didn't I mention?" He shook his head slightly, apparently startled that he'd let himself become so distracted. "Judge rejected it. All but laughed in their faces for trying it."

"Good," she said firmly. "Not that I don't think they'd all be convicted even if they were tried separately, but it'll be a lot easier on everyone to have one trial instead of six. Especially the witnesses."

"Speaking of, how _are_ we doing on witnesses?"

"Andrea's agreed to testify, against her assailants and against Linda. And Mike Logan called me, he's offered to give any testimony he has that might help - not that there's much," she added, "given the limited extent of what he actually saw and heard. The rest of the girls are extremely questionable, though. They don't trust us, and I'm not sure they'd be up to facing their attackers in court anyway."

"I don't love this," Barba admitted. "We're putting a pretty substantial amount of this case on the shoulders of one nine-year-old girl. I know she's strong, but still..."

"I know. But what choice do we have? Besides," she added, "from what Zach told me, it's not the first time the office has done that. I can't explain exactly how, but...I'm oddly confident that despite all that, the trial's going to go okay."

xxxxxxxxx

"Andrea?" Zach knocked gently on the bedroom door.

"Come in."

She was sitting on her bed, leaning back on the headboard, a book in her lap. _A familiar sight_ , he thought with a smile as he sat down in front of her. "I have something to tell you." He hesitated a moment, trying to decide how to come at the subject. "Do you remember," he said finally, "before...before the bad things happened, I told you I had a surprise for you."

A moment of consideration, and then a flash of memory in her eyes. "Yes."

"Well...I still do. I just wanted to make sure everything was still together. Andrea...how would you feel about me adopting you?"

Her eyes lit up, and then he saw it; the delighted smile he loved so much, the same smile he'd seen on the day he'd told her she would be living with him, the smile that had come so easily to her once but that he hadn't seen since he'd said goodbye to her on that fateful day just before Christmas. "Really?"

He nodded, matching her smile with one of his own. "I talked to Heather, and she says everything is in place. It may take a few months before it's official, but..."

He was cut off by Andrea flying into his arms. Her arms wrapped tightly around his ribcage, but unlike so many times over the past month, it wasn't a desperate or fearful embrace, but a joyful one. "I don't care," she said into his shirt. "I'll wait as long as it takes." She settled herself more comfortably in his arms. "I love you, Dad."

He held her close, his fingers running through her hair. _This...this is right. It's the most right anything has ever felt._ "I love you too, sweetheart."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, I'm ending this story without tying up all the loose ends, but honestly, they'd never all be tied up completely. If we had the trial, there would then be the question of any of the abusers who might still be out there, and so on, so I decided that this would be the place.
> 
> Of course, this being me, the end of one thing is always the beginning of another. This sub-series is now complete, but you can follow the adventures of Zach and Andrea through my "Not Just Another Case" series, specifically the latest story "Thought Police" (which will, among other things, wrap up a couple of the loose ends from this story).
> 
> If you're reading and enjoying, I'd love to hear what you say, so please leave comments! I respond!


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